,v^-.^^^'• 






1 ■^.€:^' 



•^ ^^^.: J 



tmi¥ 



f;z^ 



's.^st 



^*^.-li^ j^ 



'KV««3 



:jt:-i®*4^: 




^^ms-^lSKfX:. 



DR. CODMAN'S 



1831. 




dSmrr(Q% ^ 



^ht jFattfi of the MlQVimn. 



SERMON 



DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, 



TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER, 



1^1 

o 

% 

— K- 



By JOHN COtolABJ, D. D. 



- ;?-. 



BOSTaSf:ui 
PERKINS & MARVIN, 114, wIp^IITOTON STREET. 

1832. 







^ \ . 

rf • S Pi-YMOUTH, Dec. 22, 1831. 
iJev. and rfear Sir, — At a meeting otlne Pilgrim Association, held at Plymouth, 
Dec. 22, 1831, 

" Voted Unanimously, 
" That the Scribe of this Association present the thanks of this body to the 
Rev. Dr. Codman, for his interesting and appropriate Discourse, delivered by him 
at our request, this day, in commemoration of the Landing of the Pilgrims, and 
solicit of him a copy for publication. 

A true extract of the minutes. 

F. P. HOWLAND, 

Scribe of Association. 

In the above request and expression of thanks we cordially unite. 
With sentiments of great respect, we are, dear Sir, 

Your most obedient and humble servants. 



JOSTAH ROBBINS, I r^ r.f 4...««-v. 

FREDERICK FREEMAN, \ ^^- '/^^^^"^ ^^• 



Rev. Dr. Codman. 



0<^-73n3^ 



SERMON 



Hebrews, xi. 8. 

by faith abraham, when he was called to go out into a 
place which he should after rrceive for an inherit- 
ance, obeyed ; and he went out, not knowing whither 

HE WENT. 

The occasion, upon which I have been invited to 
address you, is exceeded by none of our public anni- 
versaries in deep and absorbing interest. It com- 
pares w^ith none, indeed, but that, w^hich recog- 
nizes our standing among the nations of the earth, 
as a free and independent empire ; a day, rescued, 
as long as the sun and moon shall endure, from 
oblivion, alike by the great event which it commem- 
orates, and the astonishing and providential coinci- 
dences by which it has since been distinguished. 
But to that part of this great nation, who people the 
shores of New England, and whose descendants 
have planted themselves in almost every part of this 
western continent, no anniversary can be more 
interesting than that which we are this day called 
to celebrate. It is the anniversary, not, it is true, 



of our nation's manhood, when she sought and ob- 
tained deliverance from parentage, that had become 
unnatural, oppressive and tjranical, and took her 
proper place among the nations of the earth, — but it 
is the anniversary of her infancy, and its return will 
ever be hailed with emotions of holy gratitude and 
fervent praise by the sons of the pilgrims in every 
part of the land. 

That the occasion has ever been esteemed one of 
no ordinary interest, is evident from the respect that 
has attended its observance for a series of years. 
The ministers of the altar, and the most distinguish- 
ed of our public orators have successively employed 
their talents and their eloquence in perpetuating the 
memory of those devoted men, who left the land 
of their fathers, braved the boisterous deep, and 
encountered the dangers of a savage wilderness, for 
the sake of worshipping God according to the dic- 
tates of their consciences. While there is so much 
occasion for all the descendants of the pilgrims grate- 
fully to observe the return of this anniversary, no 
one can doubt that there is a peculiar propriety for 
those of them, who profess to adhere to the same 
system of Christian faith, in which their fathers be- 
lieved, and on account of which they were exiled 
from their native land, to cherish the memory of those 
holy men, with whom, even at this distance of time, 
they feel a peculiar union, and an attachment, 
stronger than that which mere patriotism can inspire, 
springing from congeniality of thought and feeling on 
subjects of the most momentous interest ; — for it will 



not be denied by the faithful historian of New Eng- 
land that the religious opinions of that little band of 
devoted Christian heroes, who first made a lodge- 
ment in this western w^orld, were most decidedly 
orthodox or Calvinistic. 

It is not our design, at the present time, to 
enter into a controversial defence of their reli- 
gious peculiarities, nor to condemn those who have 
departed from their faith, and have embraced a 
more liberal theology. In this free and happy 
land, we would be the last to bind, by any other 
means than rational conviction, the descendants 
of the Puritans to the faith of their ancestors, 
much as we revere and cordially as we ourselves 
embrace it, — but, while we would allow to others 
the same right we claim ourselves of private judg- 
ment in matters of religious faith, — we shall not be 
denied the satisfaction of feeling a peculiar interest 
in this memorable occasion, arising from our sympa- 
thies with our pilgrim fathers in religious principle. 
Nor do we esteem it a thing of small moment that 
we are permitted to claim lineage in our religious 
faith with such men as settled the colony at Ply- 
mouth. Though we would call no man Master, and 
would ever keep our minds open, in accordance w ith 
the parting counsel of the venerable pastor of the 
church at Leyden, to all the light, which may break 
from the sacred volume of divine truth, — yet we 
would esteem it a source of unfeigned gratitude to 
that Being, who alone can preserve us from error, 
that, after the lapse of two centuries, there are to 



be found among the descendants of the Pilgrims, 
those, who are not ashamed of their fathers' faith, — 
who believe in the same cardinal doctrines of revela- 
lation, — who worship the same triune Jehovah, — and 
trust in the same atoning blood for the salvation of 
their souls. It is, therefore, most fit and proper 
that the adherents to the faith of the Pilgrims 
should cherish their memory, and observe, with 
devout gratitude, the return of this anniversary. 

In selecting a subject appropriate to the present 
occasion, it would be impracticable to mark out 
ground which had not been traversed before. In- 
formation respecting the early history of om^ coun- 
try has been very generally and universally diffused 
throughout our intelligent community. It is, in- 
deed, a circumstance, for which we cannot be too 
grateful, and which we owe to the prudent fore- 
sight and pious care of those excellent men, whose 
memory we would this day revive, that knowledge 
is so universally disseminated among all ranks and 
classes of the community. The establishment of 
public schools throughout all their towns and vil- 
lages, will remain a monument, more durable than 
brass, of the wisdom and true patriotism of our 
pious ancestors. 

But, although we cannot dwell on all the partic- 
ulars of their early history, it may be proper to no- 
tice the circumstances attending the event which 
we this day commemorate. 

The origin and settlement of New England may 
be traced to ecclesiastical tyranny. At the close 



of the sixteenth, and begmning of the seventeenth 
centuries, a severe and cruel persecution arose in 
England against those, who refused to conform, in 
every particular, to the liturgy, ceremonies, and 
observances, of the Church of England, and who, 
on account of their desires and attempts to obtain 
a purer mode of worship, were denominated Puri- 
tans, This appellation, though probably given, at 
first, in derision, has become an honorable distinc- 
tion, and is now used to designate a class of men, 
of whom the world was not worthy, and among 
whom New England boasts her progenitors. 

Such was the persecution which the Puritans 
experienced, that several of them were induced to 
remove to other countries, for the peaceable enjoy- 
ment of their religious privileges. In 1607, a small 
congregation of dissenters, in the north of England, 
under the pastoral care of Rev. John Robinson, 
being extremely harrassed and persecuted, were 
obliged to leave their native land, and take refuge 
in Holland, that they might enjoy purity of wor- 
ship, and liberty of conscience. Here they contin- 
ued for several years, when they were induced, 
from various considerations, to project the plan of 
emigrating to North America. At that period this 
extensive continent was but little known. It was 
the intention of the emigrants to effect a settlement, 
south of what is now denominated New England, 
and, for this purpose, they obtained a patent from a 
company in London, called the Virginia Company. 
But this plan was singularly overruled in Provi 



8 

dence. A part only of Mr. Robinson's congrega- 
tion embarked in this perilous enterprize, and, after 
having been devoutly commended to the divine ben- 
ediction by their beloved pastor, who never lived to 
join them, they set sail, after several unsuccessful 
attempts, in the early part of September, 1620. 
After a tedious and uncomfortable passage of 
about tw^o months, they discovered land, several 
degrees north of the place to which they were di- 
rected in their charter. Thus their charter became 
useless, and they determined to effect a settlement 
upon their own responsibility. After remaining in 
Massachusetts Bay a short time, exploring a suita- 
ble place for a permanent abode, they finally fixed 
upon a spot convenient for their purpose, to which 
they gave the name of Plymouth, in memory of 
the last town they left in their native land. 

Our time will not permit us to dwell upon their 
subsequent history. Many and severe were the 
trials which these religious heroes endured in the 
early part of their settlement. Their number, which 
consisted, at their disembarkation, of one hundred 
and one souls, was reduced nearly one half by pre- 
vailing sickness, before the opening of the spring. 
Their prospects were gloomy beyond description. 
At a distance of three thousand miles from their 
country and friends, — surrounded by savages, of 
whose disposition and intentions they were not yet 
aware, they must have been of all men the most 
miserable, had they not been supported by the 
consolations and hopes of the Christian faith. It 



was the religion of the gospel, that animated, and 
cheered, and encouraged those devoted men, — that 
consoled them under all their trials, and strength- 
ened them under all their discouragements. They 
were men of faith and of prayer, and the Lord did 
not forsake them, but gave them favour, even in 
the eyes of their Indian neighbors, blessed the la- 
bours of their hands, prospered the infant settle- 
ment, caused the little vine to take deep root and 
fill the land, so that the hills are now covered with 
the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof are like 
the goodly cedars. 

In calling your attention to the character of the 
pilgrims, I might dwell upon that spirit of enter- 
prize, by which they were distinguished, and hold 
them up to your imitation, as a bold and hardy 
race, who feared not danger, nor regarded life, in 
their persevering course ; — I might, as has often 
been done by others, enlarge on that love of free- 
dom, which, at that period of the world, when lib- 
erty was hardly known in name, distinguished your 
ancestors from the age of hereditary rank and aris- 
tocratic pride, in which they lived ; — but themes, 
like these, would better become the orator than the 
preacher, and would be more consonant to a civic 
than a religious celebration. It is to the Christian 
character of our fathers, that I would, on this oc- 
casion, invite your attention, and more particularly 
to the exhibition of that holy principle of faith, 
which was never more strikingly illustrated in the 
history of any number of uninspired men, and which, 
2 



10 

in many of its peculiarities and attending circum- 
stances, possesses a strong resemblance to that 
heavenly grace, which shone so bright in the dis- 
tinguished patriarchal example recorded in divine 
revelation. By faith, Abraham, when he was called 
to go out into a place which he should afterwards 
receive for an inheritance, obeyed ; and he went 
out, not knowing whither he went. 

It will not be thought sacrilegious nor presum- 
ing, to institute a comparison between the ancestor 
of the Jewish nation and our pilgrim fathers ; for 
every one, acquainted with the history of God's 
ancient people, and with the history of New Eng- 
land, must have been affected with the wonderful 
resemblance between them. It is true, indeed, 
they were not called by an audible voice from 
heaven, nor by visions of the Almighty, like Abra- 
ham, to leave their country, and their kindred, and 
their fathers' house, and go unto a land wdiich God 
would show them ; — but who shall say, that they 
were not moved by an impulse from heaven, oper- 
ating upon their minds, through the dealings of an 
overruling and all-directing Providence, to leave 
their native land, and seek a settlement on this 
western continent, of which they knew as little 
as Abraham did of the promised land ? Who will 
deny, that it was the same holy principle, that 
operated on the mind of Abraham, that led the 
congregation of the pious Robinson to embark in 
the perilous undertaking of a winter's voyage to 
a land, where, at that period, but few of the 



11 

civilized world had made a lodgement, and which 
was well known to be inhabited by savages and 
beasts of prey ? 

All the circumstances, attending their emigration 
to this western world, unequivocally demonstrate, 
that their undertaking, from first to last, was in- 
spired by strong religious principle. It was faith, 
that holy trust and confidence in God, which is 
the substance of things hoped for, and the evi- 
dence of things not seen, that sustained the little 
persecuted remnant, that fled over the stormy wave 
to a land of religious tolerance, while their less 
favored brethren, unable to make their escape, 
were surrounded by the emissaries of ecclesiastical 
domination. It was the same divine principle, that 
bound the exiled flock together in holy love in a 
land of strangers, and kept them, in the midst of 
foreign customs and habits, a distinct and separate 
people ; — and it was the same precious faith, that 
led them to look beyond themselves and their own 
generation, that their children after them might re- 
main the same peculiar people. It was faith, that 
led them to bid adieu to the comforts and refine- 
ments of civilized life in the old world, and to seek 
their future abode beyond the waste of waters, in 
a land uncleared, untilled, and unpeopled by civil- 
ized man. We have reason to believe, that, in this 
momentous enterprize, they took no step without 
their eye fixed upon God, for light, guidance, and 
direction. Besides their private duties of devotion, 
they observed seasons of special fasting and prayer, in 



a^ 



# 




12 

which they unitedly laid their cause before him, from 
whom all good counsels and holy desires proceed. 
On these occasions, several of which are on record, 
their beloved pastor, previous to their embarkation, 
addressed them from the word of God, and strength- 
ened their faith. On one occasion, he preached 
from that memorable passage in Samuel, — And Da- 
vid's men said. Behold we be afraid here in Judah, 
how much more then if we come to Keilah against 
the armies of the Philistines. Then David inquired 
of the Lord yet again. And the Lord answered 
him and said. Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will 
deliver the Philistines into thine hands. On another 
occasion he addressed them from Ezra viii. 2L I 
proclaimed a fast there at the river Ahava, that we 
might afflict our souls before God to seek of him a 
right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all 
our substance. 

In all their previous steps and preparations for 
their important and hazardous enterprize, they ap- 
pear to have been actuated by this divine principle 
of faith. They embarked in it, — not like the first 
discoverer of the western continent, from a zeal for 
discovery, and an ambition to hand down their names 
to posterity as the discoverers of a new world ; — nor, 
like many of their successors, from motives of cupid- 
ity and self interest. Neither the love of gold, nor 
the love of fame influenced the exiled congregation 
at Leyden in their emigration to the new^ world. 
Had the first of these motives operated upon their 
minds, they would have long before amalgamated 



13 

with the hospitable nation, with whom they sojourn- 
ed — and, had they been influenced by the last, they 
would never have left their native land, which held 
out so many inducements for honorable distinction. 

No ! — they were influenced by higher, nobler, 
purer motives. It was faith in the divine promises, 
an assured trust and confidence in an overruling: 
Providence, and a firm and unwavering conviction of 
the truth of God's revealed will in his holy word, — 
that sustained them amidst all their trials, cheered 
them in all their undertakings, and animated them 
in all their eflbrts. It was the same holy principle, 
that led the Jewish patriarch to quit Haran, at the 
divine command, for the land of Canaan, that 
induced them to emigrate to this western world. 
The knowledge, which our fathers possessed of the 
western continent, while resident in Holland, must 
have been exceedingly limited and imperfect. 
Doubtless, they availed themselves of every source 
of information, within their reach, of the nature, 
extent and peculiarities of the country to which they 
were about to emigrate. A few settlements had 
been commenced by the Virginia colony, and others. 
But so little had been efiected in the way of civili- 
zation and improvement, — and so rare and uncertain 
was the intercourse between the distant colonies 
and the mother country, — that, with every source 
of information which the times afforded, our fathers 
could have known very little of the condition and 
prospects of the new world. 

To them it must have been as little known as the 



14 

land of promise to the believing patriarch. They 
were actuated by the same principle of holy faith 
in the efforts and sacrifices which they made for 
the attainment of their desired object. Of these 
efforts and sacrifices, we can form but very inade- 
quate ideas, at this distant period, and surrounded 
as we are by the improvements in the comforts and 
conveniences of life of modern times. 

In these days of refinement, — when there is more 
luxury and extravagance on that very soil, which 
was at the time of the landing of our fathers a 
dreary wilderness, and the abode of savage man, 
than existed in the long settled country of their na- 
tivity at the time of their embarkation, it is difficult 
to conceive of the sacrifices, which they must have 
made, and the hardships, which they must have en- 
dured, in leaving their homes and firesides, and in 
effecting a settlement in a savage wilderness. We 
are accustomed, in these times, to speak of the sac- 
rifices, made by the missionaries of the cross, and 
of the trials, to which they are exposed, in leaving 
their native country to preach the gospel in foreign 
lands. But what are they, when compared with 
the sacrifices and hardships endured by our pilgrim 
fathers ! The servant of the cross, bound to distant 
India, is as intimately acquainted with Calcutta, 
Bombay, and Ceylon, as if he had himself been a 
resident in those pagan cities, — and the little mis- 
sionary band, who have recently left our shores for 
the islands of the Pacific, are already familiar with 
the natural history of the places of their intended 



15 

residence, — the former and the present improved 
character of the inhabitants, — the present state and 
prospects of the mission, and ev en with the names, if 
not with the persons of the individuals, who are ex- 
pecting to greet their arrival on those distant shores. 
Not so, with our pilgrim fathers ; — they knew little 
or nothing of the place where they intended to set- 
tle. They had no knowledge of the manners, cus- 
toms, and language of the savage tribes, that in- 
habited the country where they expected to reside. 
All that they knew, and all that they cared to know, 
was, that it was far away from ecclesiastical domin- 
ation, — that there was no hierarchy, to control their 
faith and mode of worship, — no star chamber to test 
their conformity with fire and faggot, — no royal pre- 
rogative of lordship over the conscience. Of almost 
every thing else, respecting the state and condition 
of the new world, they were ignorant. But they 
listened to the voice of conscience, as the voice of 
God, — -commanding them to go out from their coun- 
try and from their kindred to a land which he would 
show them, and by faith, like Abraham of old, — when 
he was called to go out into a place, which he should 
after receive for an inheritance, they obeyed, and 
went out, not knowing whither they went. 

Never was there a more striking and complete 
exemplification of the power of faith in overcoming 
difficulties, that appeared to the eye of sense almost 
insurmountable, — and in obtaining blessings, which, 
in the distant prospective, seemed wild and vision- 
ary, — than is afforded us by the history of our pilgrim 



16 

fathers. Thej went out, like the progenitors of the 
Jewish nation, — not knowing whither they went, — 
and their covenant keeping God, at whose command, 
so plainly indicated by the dispensations of his 
providence, — they embarked on their perilous enter- 
prize, made of them, as he did of faithful Abraham, 
a great people and a mighty nation. 

Such was the faith of the Pilgrims, — considered 
as a vital and operative principle. It may be em- 
phatically said of them — They were men of faith. 

Tt cannot but be a subject of the deepest interest 
to inquire what were the particular views which 
they entertained of divine truth. On this subject 
we are not left in doubt. Their creed was well 
known, — and will not be called in question by any. 
It recognized all those great and leading doctrines 
of the gospel, which have, within the last sixty years, 
been made subjects of controversy on that very soil 
on which they trod, and in the bosom of those 
churches which they planted. 

The Fathers of New England were decided Trin- 
itarians and Calvinists. Their doctrinal views did 
not differ from the articles of the Church of Eng- 
land. It was only in reference to their forms of 
church government, and their outward rites and 
ceremonies, that they felt bound in conscience to 
dissent. Their faith was in correspondence with 
the formularies of all the reformed churches, — and 
it is well known that, soon after the assembly of 
divines agreed upon that admirable system of Chris- 
tian doctrine at Westminster, our fathers deliber- 



17 

ately adopted it, — and uniformly taught it in their 
congregations and in their families. And it is not, 
until within a very few years, in the memory of 
many of us, that this most excellent summary of 
our religious belief has been disused in any of the 
churches, founded by the pilgrims. That those, 
who have openly and professedly departed from the 
faith of the pilgrims, should have laid aside this re- 
ligious formula, is not surprising ; but that those, 
who not only profess to agree with their fathers in 
their religious opinions, but zealously to contend 
for them, should have become indifferent to that 
compendium of Christian doctrine, which was so 
precious to their ancestors, is truly deplorable. 

It is much to be desired that the good old prac- 
tice of catechetical instruction^ once so common, if 
not universal, in New England, was revived among 
us. While we rejoice in the system of Sabbath 
school instruction, which is the glory of the age in 
which we live, and in the use of the Bible, as the 
great text book in these little nurseries of the 
church, we must be allowed, as descendants of the 
puritans, and as conscientiously attached to their 
faith, to express the earnest wish, that, in those 
families and congregations, who still profess to ad- 
here to the faith of the pilgrims, the Shorter Cate- 
chism may hold the same conspicuous place, that it 
occupied in the households and public assemblies of 
their pious ancestors. 

We do not contend for this, or any other summa- 
ry of faith, as, in all its phraseology, perfectly unex- 



18 

ceptionable. There may be some few expressions^ 
for which we might have substituted different lan- 
guage. Our fathers were not so philosophical and 
critical, as many of their descendants profess to be, 
who agree with them in their views of religious 
truth. But, if their manner of expression was not, 
in every respect, such as would be used at the pres- 
ent day, no objection can, from that consideration, 
be urged against the doctrines, which they pro- 
fessed to believe. Modes of expression will vary 
with the times ; but truth is eternal, and can never 
change. 

The puritans, if not so philosophical and critical 
in their use of language, were men of great learning, 
strong sense, and sound judgment. For theological 
science, they have not been exceeded by any former 
or later age. Many of those, who constituted the 
first Plymouth colony, were highly respectable for 
intellectual power. Surely no man of candor can 
think or speak lightly of the religious faith of such 
men as Robinson, and Brewster, and Carver, and 
Winslow, and Bradford. I know it has been said, 
that they lived in a comparatively unenlightened 
age, and that, had they lived in these days of the 
march of mind, they would have renounced their 
theological dogmas, and embraced a more liberal 
creed. 

The farewell advice of the beloved Robinson 
is often made an excuse for a wide departure 
from his faith. But can it be supposed, for a mo- 
ment, that, that truly great and liberal man, in tliat 



19 

admirable exhortation, ever meant to countenance 
such departures from the Christian faith, as the de- 
nial of our Lord's divinity and atonement, when he 
expressed his belief, that the Lord had more truth 
yet to break forth out of his holy word ? — They, 
who can indulge such an idea, must be strangely, 
if not perversely, ignorant. The Arian and Socin- 
ian heresies were well known to the learned pastor 
of the church at Lejden, and, doubtless, were held 
by him, as by all the orthodox of his day, as most 
dangerous and fatal errors. Nothing could be far- 
ther from his mind, than to sanction them by his 
parting counsel to his beloved people. It is more 
probable, that he had reference to doctrinal views 
of minor importance, or to the order and discipline 
of the church, which, at that period, was the sub- 
ject of no inconsiderable controversy. But, what- 
ever might have been his meaning, he certainly 
could never have intended to have given the sanc- 
tion of his venerable name to the revival of errors, 
that had infested the Christian church from the 
earliest period, when he exhorted his beloved flock 
to receive whatever truth should be made known to 
them from the written word of God. 

Let not that truly Catholic and excellent vale- 
dictory of the pious Robinson any longer be per- 
verted to favor religious views, which would have 
filled his holy soul with grief and with horror, but, 
in the true spirit of that remarkable document, let 
us ever keep our minds open to the reception of 
truth, by whatever instrument it may be communi- 



20 

cated. Let us call no man master, — neither Lu- 
ther, nor Calvin, nor any uninspired man ; — but, 
while we are not ashamed to acknowledge, that we 
agree with any of them in their views of divine 
truth, let us make the Scriptures the only standard 
of our faith and practice. This, we believe, is the 
true spirit of Protestantism, and the true spirit of 
the celebrated and often quoted address of the pas- 
tor of the church at Leyden. 

We freely confess our attachment to the faith of 
our fathers. But it is not simply because it was 
our fathers' faith, that we feel this attachment. 
We readily allow, that our faith in those great 
truths of revelation, to which the pilgrims gave 
their assent, is, by that circumstance, strengthened 
and established. We feel a satisfaction, which we 
cannot, and would not disguise, in the reflection, 
that our views of divine truth harmonize with 
those of our puritan ancestors. We cannot deny 
that our faith receives additional confirmation from 
the fact, that men of such purity of motive, of such 
strength of mind, of such a disinterested and devo- 
ted spirit, and of such active and persevering eflbrt, 
entertained the same views, with ourselves, of reli- 
gious truth. But if, upon an attentive and prayer- 
ful examination, we did not find the faith of our 
fathers agree with the law and the testimony, — 
highly as we revere their memory, we would, un- 
hesitatingly, reject it. We acknowledge no other 
authority than the Scriptures, no other Master than 
the Lord Jesus Christ. 



21 

The sufficiency of the Scriptures was the great 
principle of the reformation ; it was acknowledged 
by our fathers, and we hope will never be abandon- 
ed by their posterity. The pilgrims took the Bible 
for the standard of their faith, and the regulation of 
their conduct ; and the humble and diligent study 
of the sacred volume, with the firm and unwaver- 
ing conviction of its entire inspiration, led to the 
acknowledgment of that system of Christian doc- 
trine, which has been so long associated with their 
memory, and which, we doubt not, will be handed 
down, with the recollection of their virtues, to the 
end of time. 

The faith of the pilgrims, therefore, is not to be 
regarded as of mere human authority, but as drawn, 
directly and immediately, from the unadulterated 
source of all truth, the word of God. 

No men more highly reverenced, and more labo- 
riously and faithfully investigated the meaning of 
the Spirit in the dispensation of the word, than 
the puritans. Some of them were men of exten- 
sive learning and critical research, and, as a body 
of divines, we hesitate not to say, spent far more 
time, in the acquisition of profound and varied 
learning, than the active and stirring spirits of the 
present age. They were not only profoundly stu- 
dious, but eminently holy men. They studied the 
Scriptures on their knees, and wet the sacred 
pages with their tears. They lifted up their souls 
to heaven, with the prayer of the psalmist, — Open 



22 

thou our eyes, that we may behold wondrous things 
out of thy law. Who will not reverence those prin- 
ciples, by whatever name they may be distinguish- 
ed, that had an influence in the formation of such 
characters as our puritan ancestors ? 

It will not be denied, that any system of religious 
belief will, in some measure, be appreciated by the 
character of its disciples. By their fruits ye shall 
know them, — was the test established by the divine 
Author of our religion. And, if we judge of the 
excellence of their system of faith by the effects it 
produced, we shall obtain a testimony, highly hon- 
orable and satisfactory to the creed which they 
professed. That their characters were formed, in 
a great degree, by their religious principles, no 
candid man will, I think, be disposed to deny. 
What their characters were, as men of the purest 
and most exemplary morals, the impartial historian 
of their times will decide. 

We would not, blindly, receive the creed of any 
men, however excellent, and however deserving our 
esteem and regard ; but we cannot withhold our ad- 
miration from those principles, which evidently had 
such a controlling influence on the minds and pur- 
suits of the fathers of New England, — which led 
them to make such sacrifices of personal ease and 
comfort, and, like Abraham, when he was called to 
go out into a place which he should after receive 
as an inheritance, to obey, and to go out, not 
knowing whither they went. 



23 

On a review of the brief sketch, which we have 
given of the history of the first settlement of New 
England, and a consideration of that faith, by which 
our pilgrim fathers were so eminently distinguish- 
ed, we are led to admire and adore the wonderful 
providence of God. 

We have heard with our ears, and our fathers 
have told us the wonderful works of God in their 
days, — in the times of old. He must be a skeptic, 
indeed, who can read the history of New England, 
without acknowledging a particular Providence. 
The history of the Jewish theocracy does not 
afford a more unequivocal evidence of the special 
agency of Jehovah, than the history of our venera- 
ble ancestors. View the hand of God in conduct- 
ing the little flock, that sought refuge from eccle- 
siastical domination, from their native land to a 
neighboring country. To what, but the sugges- 
tions of his good Spirit, can we attribute the design 
of emigration to this western world ? 

How signally were the circumstances, attending 
their removal, overruled for good ! He, who holds 
the waters in the hollow of his hand, preserved 
them on the mighty ocean, and directed them, con- 
trary to their own design, to effect a settlement in 
this part of the country, — a part of the country,, 
prepared, as it were, in the most wonderful man- 
ner, for their reception, — a fatal epidemic among 
the Indians, a few years before, having depopulated 
the place where they landed, so that there were 
none to disturb and molest them. Had they arrived 



24 

at almost any other spot, than the one to which 
they were divinely directed, they might have found 
it exceedingly difficult, if not impracticable, to have 
effected a settlement. 

The hand of God is also gratefully to be ac- 
knowledged, in their subsequent prospects and suc- 
cess. With few exceptions, they experienced the 
most friendly attentions from their Indian neigh- 
bors. Little can we conceive of their joyful sur- 
prise, when the first native, they beheld, addressed 
them in their own language, — Welcome, English- 
men ! — Welcome, Englishmen ! 

In the whole course of their history, the pious 
mind will not fail, gratefully to acknowledge the 
wonderful providence of God. Their descendants 
would be ungrateful indeed, did they neglect to 
make this acknowledgment ; for how great is our 
debt to that Being, who planted our fathers in this 
good land ! 

Let us dwell, for a moment, upon the wonderful 
change, effected in this western hemisphere, par- 
ticularly in our own vicinity, within the last two 
centuries. 

This land w^as once a wilderness, the abode of 
savage men, and of the wild beasts of the forest. 
No cultivated fields, no thriving farms, no comfort- 
able dwellings, then met the eye on every side, — 
no busy hum of industry, no songs of praise, no 
voice of prayer, then reached the delighted ear, — 
but all was dreary, wild, and comfortless. No ob- 
ject relieved the eye, wandering over the gloomy 



25 

waste, save where the curling smoke denoted the 
vicinity of savage man. No mortal sound dis- 
turbed the death-like silence, unless it were the 
war whoop, arousing the savage tribes to blood and 
slaughter. 

How different the scene we now behold ! On 
every side we witness cultivation and improvement. 
The cleared woods now open the most delightful 
vistas to the wondering eye. The splendid dwell- 
ings of the opulent, and the no less comfortable 
and neat habitations of the industrious and enter- 
prising, — the lofty domes of the capital, and the 
innumerable spires that adorn our villages, — the 
labours of the husbandman, the mechanic, and the 
artizan, united with the various employments of 
other classes of society, — the colleges, academies, 
and schools, which are continually watering, with 
their salubrious streams, the cities, and churches of 
our God, — all conspire to produce, in the hearts of 
the sons of the pilgrims, admiring thoughts of the 
wonderful providence of God. Truly the lines have 
fallen unto us in pleasant places, and we have a 
goodly heritage ! 

From a review of our subject, we perceive the 
power of faith, and the energy of religious prin- 
ciple. 

It was faith in the promises of God, and a regard 
to religious truth, that influenced our fathers in 
their emigration to this country. We do not say 
that no other principle is strong enough to lead 
men to leave their native shores, brave a boisterous 



26 

ocean, and, in the midst of accumulated difficulties, 
effect a settlement in a savage land. Ambition, 
and love of conquest, have often done it. 

But we have reason to bless heaven, that we are 
indebted to the operation of no such principle for 
the settlement of New England. It was faith, like 
that of Abraham's, — it was the energy of religious 
princijile, that supported those holy men, who land- 
ed on the shores of Plymouth. It was the same 
divine principle, that breathed through all their 
institutions, and made them perpetual, so that we 
now enjoy their benefits, and partake of their ad- 
vantages. 

How strong, — how sacred, must have been those 
principles, which have not yet ceased to operate, 
and, we trust, will never cease to operate, as long 
as the sun and moon endure ! 

While we venerate the religious principles of our 
fathers, let us adopt them, so far as they were 
agreeable to the gospel. Let us remember, that 
it was their religious principle, that gives, even 
at this remote period, such a splendor to their 
character. While we would not implicitly receive 
their faith, nor that of any body of uninspired 
men, without searching the Scriptures, whether 
it is agreeable to the sacred oracles, we ought 
to be more than careful, how we renounce a 
creed, which had a powerful influence in forming 
such characters as the fathers of New England. 

In view of our subject, we perceive the blessing 
of a pious ancestry. 



27 

The pride of ancestry, so far as it relates to 
birth, and wealth, and honor, cannot be justifi- 
ed. It is of little consequence, whether we are 
descended from a prince or a peasant, — whether 
noble blood flows in our veins, or whether our 
origin is humble and obscure. But it, surely, is 
of no trifling importance, to be descended from 
pious ancestors ; for, in addition to the divine 
promise, that the blessing of the fathers shall de- 
scend upon the children, we may rationally expect 
much from the prayers, instructions, and example, 
of godly progenitors. 

The circumstance of having pious ancestors, fur- 
nishes a powerful motive to follow their example, 
to imbibe their spirit, and to imitate their virtues. 
Let us follow them so far, and so far only, as they 
followed Christ. " An aflectionate and respectful 
remembrance of those worthies, who have laid the 
foundation of our multiplied enjoyments," says one 
of our own orators,^ '' is a debt of gratitude. We 
possess a goodly heritage, and it should heighten 
our sense of obligation, to recollect, that a gener- 
ous foresight was a distinguished characteristic of 
our ancestors. An ardent desire to lay a solid and 
lasting foundation, for the best interests of pos- 
terity, influenced all their plans of policy, so ex- 
pressive of their wisdom. In every stage of their 
enterprise, they were prompted by an enlightened 
humanity, and a prospective reference to the hap- 
piness of their descendants. To contemplate the 

* Judfje Davis. 



28 

character of such men, is no less our interest than 
our duty. 

" Just men they were, 
And all their study bent 
To worship God aright, and know his works, 
Not hid, nor those things least which might preserve 
Freedom and peace to man." 

To be descended from such an ancestrj^, is, 
indeed, a high and inestimable privilege. Let us, 
then, my respected hearers, realize that we are the 
children of the pilgrims, and let us live as pilgrims 
and strangers on the earth. Our fathers, where 
are they ? And the prophets, do they live forever ? 
Several generations have passed away, since the 
scenes were transacted, which have, this day, been 
brought to remembrance. In a little while, we, 
too, shall be gathered to our fathers. The clods 
of the valley will cover our dust, and the spirits, by 
which it is now animated, will take their flight to 
other regions. Happy shall we be, if we can leave 
to our children such a legacy, as wo have received 
from our fathers. 



h'^ 



MR. FRANCIS' 

ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE, 

AT PLYMOUTH. 



''^' LIBRHRY 



^i^^i 



DISCOURSE 



A., C ' "^ 



DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, MASS. DEC. 22, 1832, 



IN COMMEMORATION OP THE 



LANDING OF THE FATHER 




S I Q; BV COITVERS FRAITCIS, 

5 " PQ ^ . i 

'^ »— f ^6ngregational minister op watertown. 




PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE COMMITTED OF THE FIRST PARISH, 



PLYMOUTH : 

PRINTED BY ALLEN DANPORTH 



1832. 



\Z[,Ho 



20 



SERMON. 



John iv. 88. 

OTHER MEN LABOURED, AND YE ARE ENTERED INTO THEIR 

LABOURS. 

There is a meaning involved in these words 
not inappropriate to the present occasion. Jesus 
reminds his disciples of the foundation already 
laid for the labors, on which they would enter in 
the exercise of their office as his ministers. In 
doing this, he uses expressions that may be ap- 
plied in a general sense to the relation, in which 
all men stand to those who have gone before them 
in the way of duty, enterprise, or suffering. 

We devote this day to the memory of our Fa- 
thers. It is theirs, and not our own. There is a 
spirit of fellowship in the occasion, which recre- 
ates the heart. Whatever may be the strife or 
toil, to which we are called elsewhere, here we 
come together in the tie of a common relation to 
a past age and a past generation. As dutiful chil- 
dren we are willing, I trust, to hush every unkind 
or unworthy feeling, while we stand in the pre- 
sence of the patriarchs of New-England. I 
would not do wrong to this anniversary by bring- 
ing it to bear on the passing disputes of our day. 
Let this ground at least, first trodden by the feet 



4 

of the Pilgrim Fathers, be dedicated to peaceful 
and elevated considerations. Let it be to us 
what Ehs was to Greece of old, a territory which 
was never suffered to be the scene of war, where 
Greeks of hostile States became for the time bro- 
thers, where soldiers laid down their ^rms, and re- 
sumed them not till they had left the consecrated 
region. 

The story belonging to this day has been so 
often and so well told, and the reflections it awak- 
ens have been set forth in so many forms of elo- 
quence and piety, that every fit topic may seem 
to be exhausted. I am encouraged, however, 
with the belief that our interest in the Fathers is 
not of a nature to grow old, and that he who 
speaks of them, though feebly and inadequately, 
has that in his subject which will supply in some 
degree his own poverty or defects. Indeed the 
simple and somewhat rude annals of the first days 
of New-England must gather a continually in- 
creasing attractiveness, as the distance lengthens 
through which we look back upon them, and as 
the consequences of the movement then made in 
the world's affairs, and so little regarded at the 
time, are more thoroughly or more extensively 
developed. It may be true that, strictly speak- 
ing, antiquity is yet a word almost without mean- 
ing among us. Our community in the utmost 
extent of its history is comparatively but a young 
community, and our oldest age but a green age.* 
When we look at nations, who count the years on 
their annals by thousands, whose land is covered 

*Scc Appendix A 



with remnants that point to a period beyond tiie 
reach of authentic story, with fallen columns or 
shattered monuments, still forming in their mel- 
ancholy beauty a magical connexion between the 
present moment and the days of classical antiqui- 
ty, we seem as it were in the childhood of our 
existence as a distinct people, and are made to 
feel that when we speak of our Fathers we speak 
of modern men. But such is the rapidity, with 
which the generations of mankind rush down 
through the gates of death, that the venerable 
strangeness of olden times has grown over the 
deeds and characters of the men, who two hun- 
dred and twelve years ago, here took the wilder- 
ness for their portion. Such are the revolutions 
of taste, customs, and opinions, that between 
them and us a space is already interposed, in 
some respects apparently as wide, as if it were 
measured by the course of half the ages in man's 
history, and that even two centuries are sufficient 
to excite the associations, the conjectures, and the 
reverend interest, which belong to antiquity. 

It may be thought, perhaps, that the scenes and 
the days commemorated on this anniversary are 
not sufficiently great or brilliant to require or sus- 
tain these frequent calls upon our attention. It 
may be thought, that the filial duty of celebrating 
the Fathers has been already overdone, and that 
the humble adventure of the New-England set- 
tlement is, at the best, but a meagre and barren 
story. The present, with its boasted improve- 
ments, its restless spirit of activity, its great 
achievements and still greater promises, presses 



upon us with a power so stirring and absorbing^ 
that the past, with its poor and unimposing ap- 
pearance, may seem worthy only to be consign- 
ed to the curious industry of the speculative anti- 
quarian. But it is a weak philosophy, which 
overlooks or despises the day of small things. — 
The record of the Plymouth settlers seems to me 
the more attractive, because it is the record of 
poverty and of humble efforts. There is some- 
thing refreshing to the spirit in stealing away, as 
it were, from the imposing greatness of the top- 
ics and events that now crowd upon the mind 
wdth even painful interest, to the quiet and nar- 
row spot in history occupied by the devoted pil- 
grims, steadfast and unbroken in their wants, 
their loneliness, and their sorrows. And when 
we turn from the picture of our republic as it now 
is, its apparent destiny as a new and mighty ele- 
ment of influence on the condition of man, the im- 
portant attitude which, with a rapidity almost 
miraculous, it has assumed among the nations, 
the gigantic results of its untired enterprise, its 
tide of population ever rolling on and pouring it- 
self through the vallies and around the rivers of 
the West, — when we turn from such a survey to 
that little band who sought an asylum on this 
winterbeaten shore, we must look upon them with 
any thing but indifference; we must feel that 
there is a fascination in this scene of depression 
and of unpretending perseverance in a good cause, 
w hich takes from it, even in the eye of the mere 
man of taste, all appearance of coarseness or lit- 
tleness. It seems rather to be just the scene on 



which the mind loves to repose, not tame nor 
spiritless, yet undisturbed by the glare of a migh- 
ty and prosperous community. Travellers tell 
us that they have felt even more pleasure, when 
standing in solitude by the small sources of rivers 
that sweep their long course through flourishing 
and fertile lands, than when gazing on the outlets 
at which they meet the ocean, where their waters 
are beaten into foam by the keels of commerce, 
or reflect the towers and walls of a crowded city. 
In history, as in the traveller's experience, the 
splendid is not always the most interesting.* 

It is my purpose to arrange the views I may 
present under two divisions, corresponding to the 
suggestion in the text. Our Fathers laboured, 
and we have entered into their labors. They 
subdued and prepared the field ; we have inherit- 
ed the results of their toils, as materials for fur- 
ther cultivation and ceaseless improvement. 

I. In estimating the labors of the men, who 
gave the first impulse to the settlement of New- 
England, we must by no means confine our view 
to the affecting story of their personal sufferings. 
We must regard them as occupying an important 
place in the long line of reformers, who have stak- 
ed all that men hold dear, and life itself, in the 
cause of valued principles. It is not mere hard- 
ship or self-sacrificing toil, that stamps a noble 
character on human efforts. The vicious man 
will sometimes suffer more and work harder to 
gratify his passions, than the demands of virtue 
would require him to do in order to subdue them. 

*See Appendix B. 



The votary of avarice cheerfully endures priva- 
tions more rigorous than those of monastic disci- 
pline, and gives himself up to a base martyrdom 
for gold with an unwavering spirit of constancy 
and self-denial. It is only when we regard men 
as devoted, heart and hand, to the sentiment of 
duty and to the solemn law of conscience, that 
their courage, firmness, and endurance assume a 
character of moral dignity. It is the conviction 
of a righteous cause, which sanctifies the quali- 
ties. We feel that there is a privilege in belong- 
ing to the same species with those who have de- 
fied power, smiled upon danger, and stood up 
against contempt, in strong allegiance to what 
they believed to be the right and the true. These 
have been the working-men in the world's ad- 
vancement. Great principles and important priv- 
ileges have gained a safe establishment among 
mankind chiefly at the expense of the labors and 
lives of reformers ; and the effective improvement 
of the race has been measured by the progress of 
successive reformations. This has been the case, 
for the most part, in civil affairs, in science, and 
in religion. 

These steps in the moral or intellectual progress 
of man have sometimes been the result of gradual 
and quiet changes, unobtrusive, perhaps unob- 
served at the successive stages, but producing at 
last a large amount of improvement in standards 
of thought, or habits of action. A diffusion of 
light, slow but continually expansive, takes place 
in the altered opinions or enlarged conceptions of 
individual minds, by the added contributions of a 



long series of years. Errors are undermined, 
rather than beaten down. Unreasonable usages 
are suffered to die out, instead of being demolish- 
ed. The stream is fed by secret rills and obscure 
rivulets, till its course becomes wide and its cur- 
rent irresistible ; and we ascertain that the world 
has gone forward, only by comparing with each 
other periods of time somewhat distant, or coun- 
tries somewhat remote. 

But, for the most part, the advances of man- 
kind have not been so peaceful and silent. The 
most powerful changes have been the effects of 
strong and rapid revolutions. Improvement 
breaks forth, as it were, in irruptions. The 
elements of the social state are shaken, heaved, 
and thrown into new forms by impulses that came 
apparently all at once, though in fact the materi- 
als for the explosion were gathered slowly and in 
secret. When the crisis arrives, ardent minds 
start up prepared to act upon it, and to be acted < 
upon by it. They speak in tones, the echos of 
which ring far and wide, and awaken the slum- 
bering, or summon those who were only waiting 
for the call. Then old institutions are questioned 
boldly by minds that have thrown themselves into 
the encounter, determined not to be turned aside; 
and the unprepared supporters of established 
abuses, alarmed by the storm bursting over their 
heads, find themselves suddenly compelled to ral- 
ly to the defence of what they had been accus- 
tomed to receive lazily, as an unquestioned inher- 
itance. The work of ages seems to be done in a 
few years ; or rather, a few years seem to pre- 
2 



10 

pare work for ages. The spirit of man leaps froof 
under the burden of oppression, misrule, and 
worn-out errors, and enters upon a path that 
opens into regions of broader and clearer light, 
as it reaches forward through the tract of time. — 
The consequences of such striking and powerful 
movements are not soon developed. The impulse 
may be given by a few single blows ; but it will 
require centuries to estimate the extent and ac- 
tion of the vibrations, that will thus be propagat- 
ed through the world's affairs. 

Such a revolution had been in operation about 
a century, when our ancestors came to these 
shores, as the forlorn hope in carrying forward 
the work in a new quarter of the world. They 
stood in their lot at one of the most agitating pe- 
riods of a contest of principle against authority, 
which is even now far from being brought to a 
close. The sound, which had gone forth from 
Germany, was repeated with some variations in 
other places, and English Puritans were the legi- 
timate successors of Luther and Zwingle. That 
movement, which history emphatically and ex- 
clusively denominates the Reformation, as it was 
itself the mighty and concentrated effect of pre- 
ceding events, became, in its turn, perhaps the 
most powerful and expansive in the series of caus- 
es that have given character and direction to the 
progress of the human race.* It w^as introduced 
into England under circumstances unfavorable to 
the speedy operation of its true principles and 
genuine influence. It was made the ally of the 

* See Appendix C. 



11 

profligate passions and the haughty ambition of a 
monarch, whose highest praise is, that his brute 
energy was an instrument of more good than he 
intended. Henry the eighth would have the re- 
formation proceed no further than as it might 
minister to his own aggrandizement, his revenge, 
or his policy.* His arbitrary and tyrannical 
daughter, the Maiden dueen, loved power and 
its glittering pomp too well, not to foster with all 
care whatever might gather veneration around the 
throne and its appendages. Of course she look- 
ed with angry jealousy on the disposition to in- 
troduce simplicity into the spirit or the rites of re- 
ligion, or to shake the fabric of ecclesiastical 
aristocracy. She hovered around the suburbs of 
popery, and was withheld from it, probably, only 
by the persuasion that it was better to exercise #t^*^ 
power herself, than to submit to the exercise of i'^ ^ 
it from a foreign potentate. But though so pow - > n 5 
erful a party were, to use the expressive words of • '» f fJJ 
the Leyden pastor, " enamoured of the Romish \i d £j 
hierarchic as of a stately and potent ladie,"t yet ^ nf 
the authority of the old church, which had so long ^^ 
overshadov>^ed the Christian world, was defied 
and overthrown. That was a large and impor- 
tant step. The spirit of reform had gained an 
entrance ; and though it was compelled to strug- 
gle against the selfish or narrow views of sover- 
eigns, of courts, and of a hierarchy, and to take a 
circuitous course amidst the wiles of state policy, 
still it could nowise be banished or suppressed. 

♦The causes of this are well stated by^Neal, Hist, of the Puritans, 
t John Robinson's Just and JVecessary Jlpologie^ fyc. p. 3. 



^: 



12 

The cause of English reformation, enthralled 
and shackled as it was, failed not to find advo- 
cates consistently faithful to its interests. Among 
those, who desired that the good work should not 
stop at the beginning, we must place that devot- 
ed class of men, whose spirit and principles were 
deeply imbibed by the Plymouth colonists. — 
Those, whom the fierce bigotry of Mary had driv- 
en into exile, returned with a strong love for that 
simplicity of worship and equality of rights, which 
they had witnessed on the continent in the church- 
es of Geneva, Frankfort, and other places. But 
they found on the throne a dueen, who was not 
long in letting them know that such a wide de- 
parture from the old religion was by no means 
agreeable to her taste, and who was determined 
to uphold, in all its completeness, the cumbrous 
and gorgeous array of the English church. The 
rigorous execution of the Act of Uniformity laid 
the foundation for that definite separation from 
the estabhshment, which has ever since existed. 
A numerous and continually increasing party was 
thenceforth distinctly known under the name of 
Puritans, who aimed at that purer form of faith 
and worship, which they believed themselves 
bound to seek and maintain in conformity with 
the true principles of the reformation. This 
name, however, was not confined to the separa- 
tists from the Church. It was applied to many 
who found reasons to satisfy their consciences in 
still remaining within its pale. It seems, indeed, 
to have been a name of ignominy affixed to all, 
whether within or without the Church, who were 



13 

the friends of a more thorough reform, than was 
agreeable to such as refused the yoke of Popery 
indeed, but were wilUng to take upon their necks 
another nearly as heavy.* 

Of the distinguished body, thus memorable in 
British history, the men, whose services it is our 
pride and our happiness to commemorate this day, 
were a worthy portion. The story of the Ley den 
church, formed, to use the words of Secretary 
Morton, of " divers godly Christians of our En- 
glish nation in the North of England, not only 
witnessing against human inventions and addi- 
tions in the worship of God, but minding most 
the positive and practical part of divine institu- 
tions," is too famiharly known to you, that I 
should repeat it. The character and direction, 
which this httle community took from the influ- 
ence of John Robinson, — a man scarcely to be 
mentioned without a pause for eulogy and respect- 
ful remembrance, — were such as to qualify it well 
for the high vocation to which it was called, as 
the vanguard of religion and freedom in a new 
world. His good sense led him to shun the ex- 
travagance of Brown, and to discard the name 
derived from that inconstant man, at first a fiery 
separatist, and at last an eager conformist ; and 
his catholic spirit and enlarged views were well 
adapted to correct the errors or temper the ill 
directed fervor, to which even good men are lia- 
ble at a period of rehgious revolution or of right- 
eous resistance.! 

We are, then, to consider our ancestors as con- 



*See Appendix D. fSee Appendix E. 



14 

stituting a part — an important part — of a long- 
line of reformers ; and it is with reference to this 
fact that their labors are to be regarded as pecu- 
liarly interesting and valuable. It is also neces- 
sary to take this fact into the account, in order 
to make a fair estimate of their characteristic vir- 
tues and faults. We must remember that they 
were cradled, reared, and grew old in the midst 
of conflict, — that theirs was a lot of continual 
struggle and sacrifice; and we must expect to 
find in them both the good and the evil, which 
naturally spring from such circumstances. The 
providence of God watches for our race in ways 
that are not as our ways, and with thoughts that 
are not as our thoughts, requiring us to purchase 
good at the price of contending with evil, and 
compelling even bad passions and selfish aims to 
minister to happy results. We may think it 
would be better for the great interests of man- 
kind, if improvement might always be had regu- 
larly in the quiet progress of common causes and 
effects, in what may be termed the natural order 
of things, with healthful impulses, and in easy de- 
velopements. We may imagine that an advan- 
tage thus gained by an individual or a nation, 
coming, as it were, naturally in its place, would 
be more justly appreciated, and, as a matter of 
course, would be a starting point, from which 
men would peacefully proceed to other advan- 
tages. But in all this theory there is doubtless 
a fairer promise than the reality, if it could be 
had, would fulfil. At any rate, such is not the 
actual state of the case. The world always has 



15 

been, and perhaps always will be, a battle ground , 
where from time to time the true and the false, 
the right and the wrong, the warm love of the 
new and the zealous attachment to the old, meas- 
ure strength and struggle for victory. Good is 
to be gained, in a great part at least, irregularly 
and out of the ferment produced by peculiar exi- 
gencies. Not unfrequently it must spring out of 
evil itself, and be wrung from hostile circum- 
stances by a strong pressure. It is no little con- 
solation to the spirit, when it sickens over the 
darker pages of man's history, to see that even 
from the midst of oppression, injustice, and mis- 
rule have come great efforts, which have rapidly 
carried forward the improvement, or vindicated 
the rights of communities. The case of the Fa- 
thers of New-England was one of these. They 
would never have engaged in that perilous enter- 
prise, the result of which was so glorious, — they 
would not have loosed themselves from the strong 
ties of country, friendship, and domestic chari- 
ties, — they would not have crossed the wide 
ocean, and gathered new homes on a shore un- 
traced by the foot of civilized man, — they would 
not have adventured upon all the forms of danger 
and want that must belong to the office of being 
the first to subdue the wilderness of a new conti- 
nent,— if they could have found safety and tolera- 
tion in their father-land. The event has shown 
that God meant the exigency for good ; but it 
was good necessarily wrought out through the 
medium of hardship to be endured, and of wrong 
to be suffered or resisted. 



16 

In these circumstances was found the blessing 
of that trying discipline, by which our Forefathers 
were prepared for the part they were destined to 
accomplish in the great designs of Providence. 
The hardships of their situation, as reformers, 
trained them to the arduous office of colonizing 
the wilds of America. It was this stern influence 
which nerved their minds for the heroic enterprise, 
and enabled them to bring hither, amidst circum- 
stances of deep depression and discouragement, 
the germ of those forms of freedom and improve- 
ment, to which the world is now looking with 
ever increasing interest, as furnishing signal and 
exciting lessons of instruction. The energy of 
the human character is not only powerfully exhi- 
bited, but mainly created, in the process of over- 
coming difficulties. The progress, which begins 
and is continued in struggle, at length stimulates 
men to a degree of unwavering courage, strong 
endurance, and resolute self-sacrifice, of which 
they could not have believed themselves capable. 
When we see them compelled to contend inch by 
inch for the ground, which should in justice have 
been conceded at once, and pressing onward and 
upward in a righteous cause against a host of 
obstacles, our compassion or indignation may be 
strongly excited ; but we are relieved by reflect- 
ing that this is precisely the way, in which they 
are most eflectually braced and strengthened to 
accomplish a great amount of good. Without 
this discipline, the settlement of our country 
might have taken place, at another time, under 
influences far less favorable to the production of 



17 

happy consequences, and the colonists of New- 
England would probably^ have passed away un- 
noticed in the common mass of worthy men. — 
The hard necessity of their case revealed to them 
their own strength. The power that was in them 
might have slumbered unused, had not the strong 
pressure of their condition taught them what they 
could do or bear, as the rich mine beneath the 
surface may be disclosed by the lightning's flash, 
which rends the earth. *= 

But while there was good in all this discipline, 
there was also evil scarcely to be avoided. To 
extract from a tuition so harsh and exasperating 
none but happy influences, is a task requiring 
such circumspection as can hardly be expected of 
man. In all such cases, so much vigilant cau- 
tion, so much strenuous self-command are neces- 
sary, in order, by a sort of moral chemistry, to 
disentangle the pure from the impure in the midst 
of which it is found, that the separation is, per- 
haps, never entirely effected. Strong feeling is 
unavoidably brought into action ; and this, though 
it be a necessary agent in great movements, can 
never act long and sharply without bringing into 
jeopardy the consistency and dignity even of the 
best men. The blessings, which spring from ac- 
tion and reaction, are in their nature exposed to 
this peril. A blow is given from one side and a 
rebound takes place from the other : and amidst 
the fermentation and strife of the crisis, amidst 
the zeal of the onset on one part and of defence 
on the other, it rarely happens that men see the 

*See Appendix F. 



18 

point at which they ought to stop^ or, if they see 
it, are wilhng to stop there. 

Do we ask too much, when we require that 
these considerations may be allowed to mitigate 
the censure passed upon the faults of that noble 
band of confessors, among whom we find the Ply- 
mouth and Massachusetts settlers ? I do not 
refer to the miserable abuse heaped upon their 
character and cause, in the keen excitement of 
controversy, by the bigoted churchmen of their 
day, like the sanbenitos in which the Inquisition 
dressed out its victims. That may well be suf- 
fered to pass into the oblivion, to which the ex- 
travagance of heated partizans should gladly be 
consigned. 1 allude to those grave accusations, 
which men of moderation and sober judgment 
have sometimes brought against that whole body 
of reformers, who are classed under the general 
name of Puritans. We are told of their unwor- 
thy and absurd prejudices, their unreasonable 
scruples, and their strong passions. We are re- 
minded of stern and uncompromising qualities^ 
amounting, it is alleged, almost to a renounce- 
ment of the graces, the courtesy, and the respect, 
which dignify and sweeten life. We are present- 
ed with the image of men of dark and severe 
countenances, of harsh demeanor, stiffly devoted 
to whimsical peculiarities, and frowning on the 
innocent liberties of social existence.* If, how- 
ever, there were a foundation for such charges in 
their full extent, shall we discard the apology that 
may be found in the oppressive and exasperating 



*Sce Appendix G. 



19 

circumstances that weighed heavily upon these 
men for a long series of years, and forget that 
such faults are not worthy for a moment to be 
laid in the balance against those sterling qualities 
of excellence, those substantial merits, which en- 
abled them to become the benefactors of the 
world by their deeds and sufferings ? Trace the 
history of the treatment they received at the hands 
of church and state from the time of the eighth 
Henry through that of the first Charles, and shall 
we, sitting at ease in our Zion, wonder to find 
the feelings of those, who were spurned as out- 
casts for claiming the common rights of con- 
science, becoming sometimes stern, rigid, or sour 
during such a process ? When, for instance, the 
Leyden church sought a grant from the Virginia 
company, and craved permission, as for a privi- 
lege, to banish themselves across the pathless 
ocean to the forests of these shores, the only boon 
they could obtain, wiih regard to religious free- 
dom, was, that ^Hhe king would connive at and 
not molest them, provided that they carried peace- 
ably,^' but would allow them no toleration under 
his seal. Shall we think that we have made a 
surprising discovery, if men are found not free 
from asperity, when they are taught to esteem it 
a favor to be permitted to exist in a wilderness, 
and take their portion with the wolf and the sav- 
age during good behavior ? 

But these accusations are by no means well 
founded to the extent, in which they are general- 
ly stated. At the period when our ancestors 
came to this country, the Puritans were a respect- 



20 

able, grave, and dignified class, austere in their 
general character doubtless, but not inclined to 
despise the elegancies or refinements of life. — 
Some of the best scholars in the kingdom were 
in their number. A charge implying that they 
were factious and vulgar disorganizers is without 
truth. There were bad and wrong headed men 
among them, undoubtedly : and when was there 
a cause requiring boldness and energy in its advo- 
cates, that was not sometimes tarnished by ex- 
travagance or folly ? But in the earlier part of 
their course, — and it is that of which I now speak, 
— before the pressure of circumstances had be- 
trayed the party into bitterness and excess, they 
were as a body distinguished by conscientious 
moderation. They looked indeed with but little 
favor on the trappings, the stateliness, and the 
official pomp of the establishment , but it was 
because they believed, as they said without affec- 
tation and in the honesty of their hearts, that 
these things were not according to the simplicity 
of the Gospel. For a long time they cherished 
kind and filial feelings towards the church of their 
country, though they thought and lamented that 
she had stopped midway on the path of reform. — 
Even Barrow, a warm leader among the Inde- 
pendents, when he was asked upon his trial, 
whether the church of England were a true church 
or not, went no further in his reply than to say, — 
" as it is now formed, it is not ; but there are 
many excellent Christians who belong to its com- 
munion."* They did not look with so much 



^Bogue & Bennett's History of Dissenters^ I, 133.— The ^kind and 



21 

veneration on the carved work of the sanctuary^ 
as some of their cotemporaries ; but they did not 
therefore aim to demolish the temple. Was it 
moroseness, that they reverenced the Sabbath, 
and were shocked with the Book of Sports, — 
that they deemed the Lord's day more profitably 
and appropriately spent in the sobriety of religious 
occupations, than in may-games and morris-dan- 
ces ? If SO5 some even of the dignitaries of the 
church must share the reproach ; for they were 
equally grieved at these violations of decency. — 
That these persecuted but unbroken champions 
of a righteous cause were, for many years, good 
and dutiful subjects of the king, cannot be denied 
except on the authority of the slanders of such 
men as Bancroft and Laud. When we consider 
how intimately the religious errors and abuses, 
which they opposed, were connected with the 
throne and the civil establishment, it is remarka- 
ble that they so long discriminated with patience 
and caution between the duties of remonstrance 
against the former and of obedience to the latter, 
manifesting a reasonable though not servile loyal- 
ty, while they kept consciences void of offence. — 
Their situation in this respect was not unlike that 
of some of the early Christians, whom the empe- 
ror Julian endeavored to entrap into idolatry by 
placing near his own statues the images of Jupi- 
ter and other gods, so that while, in conformity to 
the custom of the Romans, they bowed to the 
former as a token of submission and honor, they 



respectful disposition manifested in the well known letter '• aboard the 
Arbella," by the leaders of the Massachusetts settlement, should be re- 
membered in this connexion. 



22 

might seem to render the homage of worship to 
the latter.* WiUiams, bishop of Lincohi, once 
ventured to say, "that the Puritans were the 
king's best subjects and he was sure would carry 
all at last, and that the king had assured him that 
he would treat them more mildly for the future." 
It is a curious fact, that for saying this, Laud 
caused an accusation to be brought against Wil- 
liams in the Star-Chamber, for revealing the 
king^s secrets.] 

We are sometimes told that the class, to whom 
our Fathers belonged, were bigots in unimpor- 
tant matters, and wasted a disproportionate 
strength of zeal on little things. But it should 
be remembered that the points, about which man- 
kind interest themselves, are little or great ac- 
cording to the consequences to which they lead 
or the principles they involve. Estimated by this 
standard, the ardor with which these reformers 
entered even into questions about the white sur- 
plice, or the sign of the cross, will scarcely ap- 
pear misplaced or exaggerated. And even if they 
did sometimes think too much of trifles^ and if 
their conduct on some occasions seems to us like 
a strong man lifting his arm to strike a feather, 
still we should remember that by the constitution 
of our nature an overstrained enthusiasm is a sort 
of necessary stimulus to those who have a great 
cause in hand, and that without the disposition 



*Cave's Primitive Christianity^ p. 72. 

fJones'a Z,?/e of Bp. Hall, p. 150.— See the touching and indignant 
remonstrance of the ministers of Devon and Cornwall, as given by Neal, 
Hist, of the Puritans, H, 92 —The testimony of the Dutch to the ex- 
emplary and peaceable character of the Leyden congregation is too well 
known to be adduced here. 



23 

to magnify the importance of contested points, 
few undertakings of much toil or danger would 
be attempted or successfully accomplished. 

Are we reminded that our Fathers, the eager 
vindicators of religious liberty for themselves^ 
were in their turn guilty of persecution ? We 
can but say, that this fact adds another to the 
many melancholy lessons of human inconsistency. 
But where and when have the champions of the 
right and the just been always right and just 
themselves ? The reformation from Popery was 
soon disgraced by some of the very errors, from 
which it undertook to set men free. But the 
principles, which it vindicated and established 
were none the less valuable on that account. So 
the cause of religious liberty, for which our Fa- 
thers entered the breach in contest with the pow- 
er of a proud hierarchy, was not less to be prized, 
nor the debt of gratitude we owe them for wa- 
ging battle for it the less, because they were not 
always true to it in their own example. If their 
conduct in this respect be viewed comparatively, 
as it ought partly to be viewed, it may be fairly 
said that with more excuse for intolerance, they 
were less intolerant than their oppressors. It 
should not be forgotten that legal toleration for 
dissenters was a thing unknown in England until 
1689, and then was but a grudged and imperfect 
concession.* With respect to this point, it should 
always be observed that the Plymouth colony 
was in a considerable degree honorably distin- 



*See Appendix H. 



24 

guished from that of Massachusetts, by a more 
tolerant and forbearing spirit.f 

I have adverted to the labors, which the colo- 
nists of New-England shared in common with 
the great company of reformers. But we must 
not pass unnoticed, on this occasion, those per- 
sonal labors and personal sufferings, which laid 
the foundation of a flourishing community on 
these shores. The whole transaction seems to 
me to wear an aspect of peculiar moral greatness. 
You know it all. You know the anxious appre- 
hensions, which gathered over the little congre- 
gation in Holland, their vexatious negociations, 
the fraud that in different forms spread its snares 
around their removal, their devout confidence in 
God and in "the omen of a good cause,'' their 
prayers, and their tears. You have often thought 
of that solitary vessel, which, having been aban- 
doned by her companion, as if to leave her alone 
with the glory of the heroic enterprize, pursued 
her cheerless course over the wide waste of wa- 
ters. I venture to say, you have felt that with 
that ship are connected associations, in some re- 
spects not less touching and great than those, 
which history has attached to the little and crazy 
fleet of that wonderful man who, somewhat less 
than a century and a half before, reposing with 
dauntless trust on the conclusions of his own 
mind, revealed a new and vast continent to the 
gaze of the old world. Your thoughts have fol- 
lowed her course with a solemn interest, arising 
from the persuasion that a great experiment for 



fHutchinson's Hist, of Massachusetts^ II, 421. 



25 

humanity was hanging on her fate. Your hearts 
have sunk to see her shaken with the fierce winds, 
and tossing amidst the fury and blackness of the 
tempest 5 and you have almost heard the cries for 
deliverance poured forth by those devoted men, 
with no rehance but their faith, yet strong in that 
as in an overcoming power. You have marked 
how the providence of God, having chosen this 
vessel to be the messenger of high purposes, held 
its watch over her amidst danger and distress ; 
and if the Roman chieftain could say in his pride 
to his dismayed pilot — "wherefore do you fear 
while you carry Ceesar," — with how much better 
reason might it have been said to him who sat at 
the helm of the Mayflower — fear not, for you 
carry the hope of freedom and of piety ! At 
length you have found them on this barren coast, 
thanking God on their knees for deliverance from 
peril and death. You have accompanied them, 
as if side by side, while they explored the coun^ 
try, and finally marked this spot for their rest. — 
You have seen the desolation of disease and death 
spreading among the little band, while under^the 
stern severity of winter they sat at their board 
with want and famine. You have followed them 
in their intercourse with the savages, — an inter- 
course of fearful apprehension, relieved occasion- 
ally by the kindness of Massasoit, Hobamak, and 
him who, when he died, made the affecting re- 
quest that they would pray for him "that he 
might go to the Englishman's God in heaven.'' — 
The story of all that was projected, done, or en- 
dured from the first motion of the proposal for 
4, 



26 

emigration to the time, when the remnant of the 
sufferers found themselves here at last in comfort- 
able homes, is as familiar to you all " as house- 
hold words." Here at least the genius of the 
place will not permit the toil and sufferings of 
the pilgrims to be forgotten. Here at least you 
will feel, that " as an eagle stirreth up her nest, 
fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her 
wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings ; 
so the Lord alone did lead them, and there was 
no strange god with them." How much mean- 
ing may we now attach to that affecting saluta- 
tion, which fell upon the ears of the surprised 
pilgrims with startling pleasure, — "Welcome 
Englishmen !" Yes, welcome to the wants and 
the labors of a wilderness, — welcome to privation, 
distress, and wasting toil, — but welcome too to 
the high honor of kindling the beacon-light of the 
Gospel in a region of darkness, and welcome to 
the glorious reward of martyrs for truth and ser- 
vants to God !* 

II. It is time that I should pass to a brief 
consideration of the other portion of my subject, 
and remind you that we have entered into the la- 
bors of the Fathers, that their sufferings and their 
courage were the price of an inheritance to us, 
concerning which our prayer should be, that we 
may know how to prize it as we ought. It was 
the lot of the pilgrims, — a lot to which the bene- 
factors of mankind have been often called, — 

To sow in peril, and let others reap 
The jocund harvest. 



Se9 Appendix I. 



27 

Their own phrase, was that "they should be but 
as stepping-stones to others, who might come 
after them."* 

The planting of New-England under such cir- 
cumstances and^by such men gave birth]^to conse- 
quences of far more important and extensive ope- 
ration, than could have been anticipated. It is 
one of the most impressive of those instances, in 
which God teaches us that events such as man 
despises sometimes contain the moving springs of 
the greatest interests. How utterly hidden from 
the eyes of the hierarchy and the government of 
England was the nature of that work, of which 
they were the unconscious instruments ! Em- 
phatically might it be said to them, as the favor- 
ite son of Jacob said to his brethren, " that which 
ye devised for evil, God devised for good, to bring 
about, as it now appears, the preservation of a 
numerous people."! While they were framing 
and urging the severest measures against trifling 
forms of dissent, while they were inflicting fines, 
imprisonment, or death, as the penalty of non- 
conformity, while they were authorizing inquisi- 
torial persecutions under the name of judicial 
proceedings, — all unknown to themselves they 
were in fact preparing the foundations of a new 
empire ; they were casting abroad seeds which 
on another continent were to yield fruits for the 
healing of the nations ; they were driving from 
themselves men, who carried with them principles 
and feelings, the operation of which has added a 



♦Belknap's Amer. Biography, II. 168.— See Appendix K. 
fGen. L, 20, Geddes'a Translation. 



28 

volume of new meaning to man's history. So 
that if here a refuge has been opened for the spirit 
of enlightened freedom, if here an opportunity is 
presented of trying fairly the experiment whether 
man is worthy of the high privilege of self-govern- 
ment, and can keep it, the whole may be regarded 
as the result of the insupportable action of that 
bad spirit, which banished from England some of 
her best minds and purest hearts.^ I suppose 
few events could have been deemed more insigni- 
ficant by James and his court, than the departure 
of the puritan emigrants for the wilds of America. 
At that time their interest was absorbed and their 
minds agitated by the negotiation with Spain for 
Prince Charles's match, and the question of neu- 
trality in the contest between the house of Aus- 
tria and the states of Bohemia. Yet how do sub- 
jects like these dwindle and vanish in the true es- 
timate of great influences, when contrasted with 
the voyage of that small vessel, which, on the 6th 
of September, 1620, sailed from the harbor of 
Plymouth in the Old World, and finally cast her 
anchor in that of Plymouth in the New World ! 
We have entered into the labors of the Fathers 
in the blessings of our civil institutions ; for these 
may justly be regarded as the ultimate result of 
the impulses imparted by them. The English 
puritans, though faithful and loyal subjects tiU 
they were forced by circumstances into resist- 
ance, had adopted principles which were destined, 
as they were progressively developed, to operate 
as a strong check on arbitrary power. They con- 



*Seo Appendix L. 



29 

tended strenuously for some of the elementary 
rights of conscience ; and these are so intimately 
connected with civil rights, that the questions re- 
lating to the exercise of power with regard to both 
could not long be separated. Religious enthusi- 
asm is very likely to contain within itself the germ 
of the general principles of freedom, and to open 
the way for political speculations tending towards 
the doctrine, so harsh to royal ears, that power is 
a trust to be bestowed or revoked at the pleasure 
of those for whose good alone it should be exer- 
cised. England herself at this hour owes much 
to the men who, even by the confession of some 
writers whose partialities were all the other way, 
had the honor of infusing into her Constitution its 
most vigorous portions of liberty ; for have not 
recent events in that kingdom borne testimony to 
the productive energy of the same spirit that for 
two centuries and a half has been at work there, 
sometimes flashing out in violence, sometimes 
strugghng onwards slowly, and sometimes en- 
thralled or fiercely driven back, but always alive, 
always watchful, always ready for action ? 

At the period when New-England was colon- 
ized, the notions of civil freedom in the mother 
country, even among its best friends, were not a 
little confused and immature. But there were 
some principles, and more feelings, on this sub- 
ject sufficiently distinct and vital to render it pro- 
bable, that with the aid of opportunity they would 
ripen into clearness, consistency, and strength. — 
Such opportunity was found on these shores. — 
When the pilgrims, by the treachery of their cap- 



30 

tairij were placed beyond the limits of the Virginia 
Company, and their patent of course was useless, 
before they landed they entered into a compact 
which, as their Memorialist says, " was the first 
foundation of the government of New Plymouth,'^ 
and which, as you know, is considered as con- 
taining the essential principle of popular and re- 
publican institutions.^ This fact is of impor- 
tance, as showing that when left to themselves 
they spontaneously adopted ideas, the whole val- 
ue and distinct character of which they probably 
did not fully understand. It indicates that at the 
outset a principle was in existence, which in its 
gradual and sure expansion would produce the 
most extensive effects. And never was it lost, 
though the occasions for its full operation were 
comparatively long in coming. We trace its 
manifestations from time to time through the 
whole course of our history, in the strong jealousy 
of encroachment, in the clear apprehension and 
bold support of rights, even at a period when the 
colonists were sincerely loyal, and when the sus- 
picion of a wish to throw off their allegiance to 
the crown was indignantly repelled. At length 
it was brought into intense and efficient action, 
as an element of popular character and feeling, 
in the struggle which placed the colonies in the 
attitude of a separate and sovereign people among 
the nations of the earth. At that fearful crisis 
the spirit of the pilgrims was matured in the reso- 
lute wisdom, the moral courage of their descend- 



*Baylies's Hist. Memoir of the Colony of JVew Plymoitth, I, 29, and 
Hulchinaon'a Hist, of Mass. II, 409. 



31 

ants ; and the voice which then echoed over our 
hills and along our shores, and mustered the for- 
ces of a common cause, was but the louder procla- 
mation of what had been spoken many years be- 
fore in a manner less audible and distinct. In 
this connexion, I cannot but remark a striking 
coincidence appropriate to the present occasion. 
It was in the year 1769, a time when the dark 
storm was gathering, and men suspected that the 
hour of open and final resistance was at hand, 
that the Old Colony Club of Plymouth proposed 
and observed the first Celebration of the Land- 
ing,^ — as if the memory of the Fathers was awak- 
ened with new interest to hallov/ the coming strug- 
gle, that was to finish a work, which they may 
well be said to have begun in the solitary places 
of their infant settlements. And when to the 
arduous conflict succeeded the yet more arduous 
task of building the frame- work of political and 
social institutions, when the hard trial of achieving 
the prize was followed by the still harder one of 
deciding how it should be preserved and used, 
when a new and great experiment was to be made 
in the philosophy of government, when the me- 
chanism that might constitute a durable common- 
wealthjwas to be erected among a people embar- 
rassed by none of the rubbish of old institutions, 
and fettered by no remnants of Gothic establish- 
ments, and when under unexampled circumstan- 



*Dr. Thacher'a Hist, of Plymouth, p. 180. The same writer in- 
forms ue (p. 202) that when the Rock was elevated from its bed in 1774, 
it fell asunder without violence. No flaw had been previously observed 
in'it ; and some of the patriots found in it an omen of the division of the 
British empire. 



32 

ces of interest and responsibleness a choice was 
to be made, where — to use the words of one of 
the greatest men of that day* — " a wrong election 
might be considered as the general misfortune of 
mankind," — then was at length reared the struc- 
ture of a confederate republic, of which we may 
justly say, that it stands as a monument to the 
principles and labors of our pilgrim ancestors. 

Again : we have a blessing from the labors of 
the Fathers in the character, which religious in- 
stitutions have hitherto taken among us. Amidst 
the frailties of superstition and of narrow preju- 
dice, some of which the colonists of New-England 
shared in common with their age, and some of 
which grew out of their peculiar circumstances, it 
is refreshing to find that they recognized distinct- 
ly and fully certain leading principles, which lie 
at the foundation of the most expansive forms of 
religious freedom. They had been driven in self- 
defence to institute inquiries, from which resulted 
views of far reaching import , and if there were 
times when these viev*^s were mingled with bitter- 
ness or darkened by unhappy errors of judgment, 
they were neither the first nor the last body of 
men who have not been always as good as their 
principles. The great elements of the charac- 
ter, which religion has taken in our community, 
were brought to the Rock of Plymouth and to 
the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Here were 
established the important principles, now so 
familiar to us, that Christians are to look to the 
Scriptures for the binding rule of faith and prac- 



^Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist. 



33 

tice, to judge for themselves of their meaning, and 
to believe and worship accordingly, — that every 
church is an entirely independent body, — and that 
all churches are in every respect equal. The 
covenants of some of the earliest churches were 
remarkable for the Christian simplicity and the 
elevated spirit, in which they were framed. They 
were so free from a sectarian character, that they 
could not have excluded from religious commun- 
ion the sincere Christian of any denomination, — 
as if designed to exemplify the fine remark of 
John Robinson, who, in his very interesting vin- 
dication of his fellow-believers, says that their 
faith consisted not " in the condemning of others, 
and wipeing their names out of the bead-roul of 
churches."* 

No men ever felt more deeply than our Fathers 
the necessity of religion to the good of the com- 
munity, as well as to the improvement and salva- 
tion of the individual. They believed this power 
to be one of those elements of social union, which 
are vitally essential. They did not suppose that 
all which can or ought to be said of it is finished, 
when it is affirmed to be a concern between the 
individual and his God. In their estimate it was 
this indeed ; but then it was likewise a concern 
between the members of society, a matter in 
which they are mutually interested ; and they 
would as soon have thought of a world without a 
sun, as of a community without rehgion, or with- 
out a provision for its support. Whether in all 
this they judged wisely or not, let the wild exper- 

^Just and JSTecessary Apologie^ ch. xii. 

5 



34 

iments^ which have sometimes been made in de- 
fiance of such principles, bear testimony. But 
while they felt the importance of giving religion a 
strong and safe lodgement among the elements of 
security and wellbeing in the social state, they 
set themselves in the spirit of self-sacrifice against 
the impositions of man in this sacred interest, 
against the assumed right, questioned by few but 
themselves in their day, to bind conscience or to 
fetter the soul. Though the merit of uniform 
consistency was wanting to render their praise 
complete, still we must remember that if there 
has hitherto been in our community a happy union 
of profound respect for religion with the entire 
religious freedom of each individual, — if public 
opinion has regarded it in all its forms as the safe- 
guard of society, while every man has been left 
in perfect liberty to choose among its forms ac- 
cording to his own convictions, — we are bound in 
justice to trace the blessing to its origin in the 
labors and character of the men who laid the 
foundations of New-England. 

We are accustomed to believe that nothing in 
our condition demands a more hearty oflfering of 
gratitude, than that the soul is free, and that the 
relation between man and his Maker is untouched 
by the arm of civil authority. We deem it a 
precious privilege that we are not compelled to 
judge in spiritual matters by prescribed and fixed 
formularies, — that, so far as outward force is con- 
cerned, religious truth is not driven into by-paths 
and circuitous routes, nor compelled to find its 
way in silence and secrecy, but may stand forth. 



35 

and announce its claims, and win what minds or 
hearts it can, — that Christianity, the messenger 
of God's mercy to the world, is not chained, and 
manacled, and made to work out a task prescrib- 
ed for her by arbitrary povver, but that for aught 
government can do she retains her native freedom, 
and scatters her blessings from an open hand 
wherever there is a willing mind, or a soul that 
has sought happiness in vain from other sources. 
There may be indirect influences among us, which 
in some cases embarrass true liberty of conscience 
if not as cruelly, yet as surely, as the prospect of 
the prison or the fagot. But these are not evils 
constituted and sanctioned by our institutions ; 
and the man among us who bears an enslaved 
mind, does so by his own choice. The whole 
apparatus of established creeds and cumbrous 
ceremonies, by w^hich the civil power seeks to bind 
religion fast in its service, is unknown to us ; and 
we are accustomed to congratulate ourselves that^ 
we are allowed to try the experiment of what re- 
ligion can do for man w^here difference of opinion 
is not regarded as a crime, except in the impotent 
denunciations of the bigot. If in all this there be 
a great good, though the good may be perverted 
by a melancholy abuse into licentiousness, let the 
praise be given to those v>^ho breasted the shock 
of that stern contest with kings and prelates, out 
of which sprung the redemption of the faith of 
Jesus from bondage. If in all this there be a 
blessing, to which we point with exulting thank- 
fulness, however unworthily we may use it, let 
the honor be paid to those who, in a season of fear- 



36 

ful struggle, stood up in the strength of heaven's 
cause for the rights of conscience against time-hal- 
lowed usurpations and consecrated abuses, and 
who at length, carrying forth victory in their re- 
treat, like the church personified in the sublime 
visions of the Apocalypse, " fled into the wild- 
erness where they had a place prepared of God." 
There is an aspect, in which the freedom of 
mind thus won by our progenitors, and transmit- 
ted to us, may long render an important service 
to the cause of religious improvement. I refer 
to the facility, with which religion may thus 
change its outward forms to meet the variations 
arising from the progress of society. The differ- 
ence between the religious sentiment, and the 
modes in w^hich it is manifested or sustained ex- 
ternally, must have occurred to every attentive 
observer of man. The sentiment itself is the only 
thing, which can be, or ought to be, permanent. 
The forms, which it takes or abandons, at one 
period or another, are only helps, in their nature 
temporary. They are of great importance, doubt- 
less, so long as they are fitted to answer their true 
purpose as the defence and support of solemn re- 
alities. But they are necessarily changeable, 
and must be so while man is a progressive being. 
It is the part of a wisely constituted society to 
provide that these changes may take place easily, 
and without that violence which is apt to react 
injuriously upon the religious sentiment itself — 
Truth is grossly wronged, when it is bound fast 
to human forms in such a manner, as to fix the 
impression that it must live or die with them. If 



37 

it be not free to break away from them and take 
new ones, the essential, Hfe-giving spirit will be 
brought into subjection to what is necessarily 
perishable, — the everlasting power will be en- 
thralled by external circumstance. If then our 
puritan ancestors, by maintaining the entire free- 
dom of the Christian believer as to all the forms 
and helps instituted by man, while at the same 
time they were firmly persuaded that the religious 
sentiment belongs to the very life-blood of socie- 
ty, and that without it there is rottenness at the 
heart of all institutions, shall be found to have 
given a strong impulse to the development of the 
interior power, the spiritual life of Christianity, 
they will have done more perhaps than any other 
men to send it forth on the free and glorified 
course, which as a principle of moral sanctifica- 
tion, we beUeve, it is destined to run. 

It would be easy to enlarge the details of that 
inheritance, into which we have entered from the 
labors of the Fathers. The impulse, which the 
cause of learning and of good education so early 
received in this part of our land, and which has 
been perpetuated ever since with increased vigor, 
is a rich part of the inheritance. There are 
names — I need not enumerate them, for they are 
famihar to us all— in the first half century of 
New-England^ s settlement, sufficient to show 
that it was not mere illiterate rudeness which took 
refuge in the wilderness,— -men, both among the 
clergy and the laity, of large scholarship, of hard 
study, of minds ripened under the tuition'of books 
as well as under the stern discipline of circum- 



38 

stances. It was, indeed, the natural result of the 
principles which brought them hither, that the 
means and the love of knowledge should be amonsr 
the constituent elements of the new community. 
The good seeds were sown as plentifully as cir- 
cumstances permitted 5 and without making any 
idle boast of the intelligence of our people, we 
may say that a healthy and profitable growth has 
sprung from them. It is a well known fact, that 
" during the greater part of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the literature of the American colonies was 
in a great measure confined to New-England."* 
I am far from wishing to boast of comparative 
superiority at present over other parts of our union 
in this respect 5 for we rejoice to believe that the 
several portions of our confederacy are pressing 
forward earnestly on the path of mental improve- 
ment. But we must bear record, that if the 
means of diffiising knowledge, if free schools and 
literary seminaries grew up first on the soil of 
New-England, we owe, for the happy fruits that 
are springing from them in our country, a tribute 
of gratitude to the worthies of old who planted 
and watered the germ at a time, when most men 
would have thought they were doing much, amply 
enough, if they could provide for the pressing 
wants of the passing day, and find safety for their 
persons and settlements. 

From these and kindred considerations it is 
manifest, that the men of whom I have spoken 
were called, in the providence of God, to perform 
a most important part in the world's affairs, and 



'IIL\\\qi''s Retrospect of the eighteenth Century^ll, 332. 



39 

performed it well. The great idea, so to say, of 
which it was their office to sketch at least the 
outline on the map of man's history, is instinct 
with a vitality, the full power of which the world 
is yet to learn. It is taking its course among the 
nations, as a quickening and elastic element in 
the combinations of thought and action that are 
in progress, or are yet to be formed. It is the 
interior spirit which stirs in those omens of new 
developments, that are believed to be now 
abroad in the world. The sounds are heard from 
deep and distant places, which may in time be 
formed into a distinct and articulate utterance, 
announcing that man has learned to read better 
than before the design of God in the purposes of 
the social state. If the history of a large part of 
mankind for a century to come shall, as we are 
prone to beheve, be fraught with such interest, 
dear to the friends of improvement, as no previ- 
ous century has exhibited, it is not perhaps tgo 
much to say, that the pilgrim spirit will then be 
understood to have borne within its latent energy 
a measureless power of good for our race, and 
that the voice which cried in the American wild- 
erness will have returned to the old world, whence 
it came, to awaken corresponding voices there. — 
But if such a view must be deemed too much like 
the dreams of prospective romance, still we may 
not forget that the name and the doings of the 
Plymouth and Massachusetts pilgrims are bound 
up in inseparable association with the fact, that 
here on this Western continent a scene has been 
opened for a grand experiment on the capacity 



40 

of man for self-direction and independent action, 
an experiment of new forms of society and of prin- 
ciples never before recognised as the basis of a 
community, an experiment, we may add, on which 
the eyes of some of the wisest and best on the 
other continent are earnestly intent, with prophet- 
ic anticipations of a refuge for the high interests 
of humanity, when worn-out systems with their 
abuses shall have passed away.* God save us 
from the shame and the guilt of betraying such 
hopes to a bitter and inglorious disappointment ! 

Such then were some of the labors of those, 
whom on this anniversary we delight to commem- 
orate ; and such is the inheritance which has fal- 
len to our lot. We love to come hither, and in 
the spirit of filial reverence bring our tribute of 
grateful remembrance to the spot, which is forev- 
er hallowed by the names of Carver, Bradford, 
Brewster, Winslow, and Standish, and where the 
dust of our ancestors is mingled with the earth on 
which we tread. The Fathers, where are they ? 
They have joined the mighty congregation of the 
dead : their witness is in heaven : their record is 
on high. In every thought of the past we hear 

The due beat 
Of Time's slow-sweeping pendulum, that marks 
The momentary march of death on man. 

It is the presence of mind, which imparts a solemn 
and touching interest to the ravages of time 
among the generations of men. Without this, 
even the most magnificent ruins of inanimate na- 



^See Appendix M. 



41 

ture have comparatively but little to affect us. — 
There are convulsions, which shiver in pieces the 
rock and rend fragments from the mountain ; the 
river may be turned aside from its deep bed ; the 
restless ocean wears away the land on which it 
beats, and again the shore gains upon the domin- 
ion of the mighty waters 5 the forest goes down 
to the dust in the slow progress of decay, and a 
new growth comes in its place to fall likewise in 
its own time. On changes like these we look 
with wonder, as objects of study or of curiosity. 
But where living, thinking, acting man has been, 
there the retrospect presents an interest of anoth- 
er sort, — an interest that kindles our hearts as if 
by the touch of an invisible power, and consti- 
tutes a hallowed fellowship between our minds 
and minds that have long since gone upward to 
higher scenes of action and improvement. Why 
is it that the traveller visits, with an emotion al- 
together different from the feeling excited by the 
common wrecks of nature, those ancient cities 
that have been partly recovered by the labors of 
modern times from the mass of earth and lava, 
under which they had been buried for ages ? It 
is because they speak to him of man — of man in 
other times — of his intellect, his works, and in- 
ventions, of his social arrangements, his habits, 
his sufferings, and his joys. The soul of those, 
who trod the streets and reposed in the dwellings, 
lingers around the imagination of the spectator ; 
and the most common utensil, the most ordinary 
edifice, becomes a symbol to signify that spirit 
abode and wrought there. Such is the natural 



42 

sentiment of the human heart all over the world. 
We do right then, though here we have no ancient 
ruins and but few memorials of the past, to vene- 
rate this place as the cradle of our community, 
" gentis cunabula nostrse ;" we do right to come 
hither when winter is sending its blasts along 
these shores, or has laid its snow-wreaths on these 
hills, that we may gather salutary excitement 
from our kindred with the departed wise and good. 

And now, Christian friends, it becomes us to 
ask whether we have honored the memory of the 
Pilgrim Fathers in the only manner worthy of 
them, or profitable for us, by imitating all that 
was good in their example, by imbibing all that 
was pure and holy in their spirit. I am not about 
to repeat the complaint, which has been reiterated 
from some of the remotest ages on record, that 
"the former days were better than these. '^— 
The complaint in general is idle and unfounded. 
What is called degeneracy is often only an alter- 
ation, and not necessarily an alteration for the 
worse. The lesson to be collected from history, 
frequently, is that the mass of men rather change 
their virtues and vices, than become actually bet- 
ter or worse. Our faults and virtues belong to 
our period of society, as the faults and virtues of 
our Fathers did to theirs 5 and a comparative es- 
timate involves the checks and balances of so ma- 
ny different considerations, that it is not so easily 
despatched as may seem to some indiscriminate 
praisers of the past time. But, without discussing 
the relative merits of present and former days, 



43 

we must remember that our praises of the pilgrim 
band are nothing worth, if they do not express 
and cherish on our part the love of high and holy 
principles. The martyrs to truth and freedom 
have ever deemed their own dearest honor to be 
the honor paid to their beloved cause. They have 
sought no better reward in this world, than that 
their good work should be taken up and carried 
on by willing hands, pure hearts, and wise minds. 
They have desired that their eulogy should be 
written in the completeness of results, to which 
the brevity of human effort allowed them only to 
point the way and direct the tendencies. They 
have not asked of their successors to walk in their 
steps, any further than their path shall be found 
to coincide with the great line of duty and im- 
provement. They wrought out the idea that 
dawned and brightened in their souls, and thus 
brought their part nobly and well to the treasury 
of man's highest good. It remains only that 
those, who come after them, work out some idea 
of kindred excellence, not necessarily in the old 
form, but as it glows in their own spirits, and 
thus do their part for the common race as faith- 
fully and fearlessly. 

Such is the bond of moral connexion, which 
links the men of the present to the great and good 
of the past, to those who have turned back the 
dark waters, that threatened to break over and 
bury the landmarks of man's best possessions, his 
rights of conscience, his mental and moral free- 
dom. And such, I believe, is the relation we are 
called to sustain toward the ancestors of New- 



u 

England, not the relation of servile imitators, but 
that of fellow-workers in a good and righteous 
cause. We fulfil well the duty we owe to their 
memory, not when we cleave blindly to their 
forms of faith or modes of conduct, — for these 
may have been right or wrong, — but when we 
welcome and cherish those manly principles, that 
sustaining, sanctifying spirit, which upheld them 
in their work in the midst of darkness, sorrow, 
and sickness of heart. That work was indeed no 
delusion of a heated imagination 5 but even had 
It been so, the spirit in which it was accomplished 
would have been left to enrich the moral history 
of our race. They stood in awe of the human 
soul, of her dignity and freedom 5 and however 
rudely they might sometimes assert her cause, 
yet there was the stirring of God's power within 
them, which told them that they were right and 
must press on and die in a labor, which others 
would finish. We honor the Fathers then, I re- 
peat, not by believing all that they believed, nor 
by doing what they did, but by seizing on the 
great principles which gave to their doings all 
the real value they have, all the just praise they 
deserve, and by following out these in their true 
consequences honestly, wisely, faithfully. We 
honor them, when the representation of them 
which we exhibit is that of children, in whose 
veins flows the blood of their sires, not that of 
dead pictures, though the resemblance should be 
true in every line and feature.* This is the hom- 
age we would render to the piety, the long tried 

*See Appendix N. 



45 

endurance, the moral courage of our Fathers, — 
the only homage, as we beheve, fit for them to 
accept or for us to give. The pilgrim spirit, we 
trust in God, has not deserted our land ; we trust 
it has gone forth far and wide among us, to be 
our light and hope in every day of darkness or of 
fear, 

Till the waves of the bay, where the May -Flower lay, 
Shall foam and freeze no more. 

Let the cause of education among us be wisely 
cherished in the belief that the outlay we make 
on mind is the noblest use of our treasure , let 
liberty rest on the foundation of those great prin- 
ciples of the human constitution, which may not 
be neglected with impunity 5 let the sanctifying 
influences of the Gospel be interwoven with the 
whole structure of society, and the church of 
Christ be permitted to go forth on an unshackled 
course and be glorified; — then the men of other 
lands shall know that beyond the waves lies the 
home of the free and the good, the dwelling of 
man as God designed him to be, and of the Chris- 
tian as Jesus would have him ; and then it shall 
be seen that from the precious seed the pilgrims 
bore, when they went forth in sorrow, have come 
the sheaves of a glorious harvest ! 



APPEHDOl. 



A. 

A striking illustration of the youthfulness of our country may 
be found in the fact, that within a very few years it has required 
only the memory of two men to reach back to the first Plymouth 
colonists. The Hon. Ephraim Spooner,who died in March 1818, 
was acquainted with the venerable Elder Faunce, who died in 
1745 in the 99th year of his age , and Elder Faunce was well 
acquainted with some of the the first settlers. 

B. 

Ernesti, in the fine dedication prefixed to his edition of Cic- 
ero, has well and truly said — " Nescio enim, naturane nobis hoc 
datum sit, an errore quodam ipsa antiquitate vehementer move- 
cimur, magisque rebus antiquis, quamvis tenuibus et parvis, 
quam recentibus vel maxirais aflSciamur." 

C. 

The causes and consequences of Luther's reformation have 
furnished a most fertile topic for ingenious and profound specu- 
lation. The subject has perhaps never been investigated in a 
more truly philosophical spirit, than in the work of Villers. — 
That great revolution was doubtless aided in its progress by 
many concurrent labors, some of which were apparently trivial, 
'but really important. Warton has observed, that " the lively 
colloquies of Erasmus, which exposed the superstitious prac- 
tices of the papists with much humour and in pure Latinity, 
made more protestants than the ten tomes of John Calvin." — 
Hist, of English Poetry, III. 267. The materials for the 
final manifestation, which was brought out under the agency of 
the great reformer, had been long in accumulation, when the 
matchless energy of that most courageous man put them in ac- 
tion. The immediate causes of remarkable changes are gen- 
erallji not those, which deserve the most attention. It is said 
that a work was once projected, to be entitled Historia Refor- 
mationis ante Reformationem. A similar history might be de- 
sired with regard to almost all important changes. But the hu- 
mor of tracing a long series of connexions and dependences 
among events is too pleasant an exercise of ingenuity not to be 
abused. I do not remember a more striking instance of the 
absurd length to which speculations of this kind may be carried 



48 



than in the concatenation of causes and effects, by which John 
Newton of Ohiey seriously attempts to show, that if Joseph had 
not dreamed, " mankind had been still in their sins without 
hope, and the counsels of God's eternal love in favour of sin- 
ners defeated."! See his Authentic Narrative, 6lc. Letter VI. 

D. 

The term Puritan, for some time after its origin, was not the 
exclusive designation of those who separated from the Church, 
but was applied to all such as were remarkable for strictness or 
severe piety, or such as entertained scruples about complying 
with some ecclesiastical requisitions. The remarks of Fuller 
on this subject deserve to be quoted. " The English Bishops," 
says he, " conceiving themselves impowered by their Canons, 
began to show their authority in urging the Clergy of their 
Diocess to subscribe to the liturgie, ceremonies, and discipline 
of the Church, and such as refused the same were branded with 
the odious name of Puritans. A name which in this nation 
first began in this year (1564), and the grief had not been 
great, if it had ended in the same. The philosopher banisheth 
the term, (which is poll/ scb man) thcit is subject to several senses, 
out of the Predicaments, as affording too much covert for cavill 
by the latitude thereof On the same account could I wish 
that the word Puritan were banished common discourse, be- 
cause so various in the acceptions thereof We need not speak 
of the ancient Cathari or primitive Puritans, sufficiently known 
by their hereticall opinions. Puritan here was taken for the 
opposers of the Hierarchie and Church-service, as resenting of 
superstition. But prophane mouths quickly improved this NicJc- 
na?ne, therewith on every occasion to abuse pious people, some 
of them so far from opposing the liturgie, that they endeavoured 
(according to the instructions thereof in the preparative to the 
Confession) to accompany the Minister with a pure heart, and 
laboured (as it is in the Absolution) for a Wfe puix and holy." — 
The Church History of Britain, b. IX, p. 76. Some of the 
best prelates in the Church, such as Hall, bishop of Norwich, 
were reproached with being puritanically inclined, because 
they would not fall in with the fashionable laxity of principle, 
while they were willing to abate the rigor of ceremonies and un- 
important matters for the sake of tender consciences. Under 
these circumstances the name became an honor, instead of a 
disgrace ; and there was reason for the prayer expressed by an 
admirer of these good men — ''sit anima mea cum Puritanis 
Anglicanis." In process of time, however, the term Puritan 
was appropriated entirely to separatists from the Church, and 
other names to designate the same body succeeded this. " It 
now appeared," say Bogue and Bennett, " that there were some 
vwho wished to make the church of England the half-way house 
of the reformation, while others were for going all the lengths to 
which the Scriptures might lead. Hence the latter party, who 
pleaded for a church more pure from all the corruptions of pope- 



49 



iry, were denominated puritans ; when the act of uniformity was 
passed, in the reign of Charles the second, they were called non- 
conformists ; and at the revolution they obtained, from the tol- 
eration act, the title of dissenters. Hooper, bishop of Gloces- 
ter, who was burnt alive as a martyr for the protestant religion 
under queen Mary, was the first puritan or dissenter." Histo- 
ry of Dissenters, I, 49. See Neal's Hist, of New England^ 
ch. II, Peirce's Vindication of the Dissenters^ Part I, and Bur- 
net's Hist, of the Reformation, Part HI. 

E. 

Brown and Robinson seem to have differed not so much in 
principles, as in spirit. Robinson has been called " the Father 
t)f the Independents;" but Brown had before him zealously in- 
culcated the principles of the Independents. They both main- 
tained the equality and " independence of churches, the right of 
the brethren to elect and invest with office their minister with- 
out the sanction of ecclesiastical governors, and in general those 
views with regard to the nature and power of churches, which 
rendered the Brownists so odious to the hierarchy. I am not 
aware that Robinson ever receded in any degree from these 
principles. The difference between the two men was chiefly in 
temper and character. Brown was fiery, rash, and unstable, 
and, as might have been expected, soon deserted his own prin- 
ciples. Robinson was calm, considerate, and steadfast ; and 
therefore though he adhered to his views to the last, yet from 
being at first one of the rigid separatists he became afterwards, 
by intercourse with Dr. Ames whom he found in Holland, much 
more mild and lenient with regard to other churches, — insomuch 
as to give great offence to the violent Brownists who stigmatized 
him as a Semi-separatist. In his Apologia quorundam Chris-' 
tianornm^ &-c., printed in 1619, and afterwards translated into 
English with the title of *' A just and necessary Apologie of 
certain Christians," &C., he was more charitable and less for 
separation than in his " Justification of Separation from the 
Church of England, against Mr. Richard Bernard his invective," 
&/C., published in 1610. Robinson was involved at one time in 
a controversy with one of the brightest ornaments of the English 
church. Hall, afterwards bishop of Norwich. Hall wrote an 
Epistle addressed to him in connexion with John Smith, the 
pastor at Amsterdam, styled the Se-haptist because he baptized 
himself by immersion. This letter was directed to them as 
"" ringleaders of the late Separation," and was full of strong and 
earnest expostulation, Robinson replied to it in " An Answer 
to a censorious Epistle," in which he complained of being stig- 
matized by the term ringleader. Hall rejoined in his " Com- 
mon Apology of the Church of England," &c., in which, with 
the contemptuous asperity to which even good men are some- 
times betrayed by the warmth of controversy, he says — " as for 
the title of ringleader, wherewith I styled this pamphleteer, if I 
have given him too much honour in his sect, I am sorry. Per- 

7 



50 



haps I should have put him (pardon a homely, but, in this sense, 
not unusual word) in the tail of this train. Perhaps I should 
have endorsed my Letter ' To M. Smith, and his Shadow." — 
So I perceive he was." — See The Works of Joseph Hall ^ D. D. 
&c., edited by Pratt, vol. Vil, p. 171, and vol. IX, p. 401.— 
Little reason had the churchman to speak thus of a man, whose 
talents and learning were such that he was selected to hold a 
public disputation with Episcopius. The maturity, which P.ob- 
inson's charitable and enlarged views at length reached, is 
evinced by those admirable passages, so often quoted, in the 
well known Fast Sermon in July 1620, which justly deserve 
the high praise bestowed upon them by Prince. 

F. 

Foxcroft, pastor of the First Church in Boston, reported it as 
a saying of our Forefathers, that *' they esteemed hroioii bread 
and the Gospel good fare.'^ The severity of their circumstan- 
ces would naturally tend to secure them from idle and corrupt 
self-seekers, from those who might have been tempted to join 
them by the lure of wealth or power. Cushman, in the Epistle 
Dedicatory to his Sermon at Plymouth in 1621, describing the 
sort of men who were wanted for the new settlement, says — " if 
there be any who are content to lay out their estates, spend 
their time, labours, and endeavours for the benefit of them that 
shall come after, and in desire to further ihe Gospel among those 
poor Heathens, quietly contenting themselves with such hard- 
ship and difficulties, as by God's Providence shall fall upon 
them, being yet young and in their strength, such men [ would 
advise and encourage to go, for their ends cannot fail them." — 
Yet even then the preacher, it seems, did not think the colo- 
nists exempt from the danger of selfish motives and purposes ; 
for in the Sermon (p. 16) he says — " It is reported, that there 
are many men gone to that other plantation in Virginia, which, 
whilst they lived in England, seemed very religious, zealous, and 
conscionable, and have now lost even the sap of grace and edge 
to all goodness, and are become mere worldlings. This testi- 
mony I believe to be partly true, and amongst many causes of 
it, this self-love is not the least. It is indeed a matter of some 
commendations for a man to remove himself out of a thronged 
place into a wide wilderness, to take in hand so long and dan- 
gerous a journey to be an instrument to carry the Gospel and 
humanity among the brutish heathen ; but there may be many 
goodly shews and glosses, and yet a pad in the straw ; men may 
make a great appearance of respect unto God, and yet but dis- 
semble with him, having their own lusts carrying them : and 
out of doubt, men that have taken in hand hitherto come, out of 
discontentment, in regard of their estates in England ; and aim- 
ing at great matters here, affecting it to be gentlemen, landed 
men, or hoping for office, place, dignity, or fleshly liberty ; let 
the shew be what it will, the substance is naught, and that bn-d 
of self-love which was hatched at home, if it be not looked to, 



51 

will eat out the life of all grace and goodness ; and tliongh men 
have escaped the danger of the sea, and that cruel mortality 
which swept away so many of our loving friends and brethren, 
yet except they purge out this self-love, a worse mischief is pre- 
pared for them." Still it may truly be said of those who sus- 
tained the enterprise of the iirst settlement of New England, 
and infused into it the spirit of devotedness without which it 
would have perished, that — in the language of Stoughton in his 
Election Sermon, — "God sifted a whole nation, that he might 
send a choice grain over into this wilderness," 

G. 

The Edinburgh Review (No. XXV, 1808), in an article on 
Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson, has 
some excellent remarks on the difference between the charac- 
ter of the earlier Puritans, and that which they acquired after 
the Restoration, when they were a defeated, and degraded par- 
ty, — a difference which has not been sufficiently considered. — 
*' It is from the wits of that court (the court of Charles the se- 
cond) however, and the writers of that party," says the review- 
er, " that the succeeding and the present age have derived their 
notions of the puritans. In reducing these notions to the stand- 
ard of truth, it is not easy to determine how large an allowance 
ought to be made for the exaggerations of party hatred, the per- 
versions of witty malice, and the illusions of habitual superiori- 
ty. It is certain, however, that ridicule, toleration, and luxury 
gradually annihilated the puritans in the higher ranks of socie- 
ty ; and after times seeing their practices and principles exem- 
plified only among the lowest and most illiterate of mankind, 
readily caught the tone of contempt which had been assumed 
by their triumphant enemies, and found no absurdity in believ-' 
ing that the base and contemptible beings vvho were described 
under the name of puritans by the courtiers of Charles II, were 
true representatives of that valiant and conscientious party, which 
once numbered half the gentry of England among its votaries 
and adherents." 

No one, vvho has read it, can forget the powerful description 
of the puritan character in the same Review, in the splendid ar- 
ticle on Milton, No. LXXXIV, 1825. 

H. 

Locke's admirable Letters on Toleration first placed the sub- 
ject in a clear light, and on the foundation of great general prin- 
ciples. They have been justly called " the best treatise on re- 
ligious liberty, which has ever appeared since the day that the 
chief priests and captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, com- 
mitted Peter and John to prison for preaching Christ." Locke 
felt obliged to introduce the first Letter to the world in a very 
guarded and cautious manner. It was written while he was 
living as a proscribed man in Holland, and published first in 
Latin with an evidently studied obscurity, on the title page, as 



52 

to its author. Limborch, to whom it was dedicated, disclosecf 
the secret to a friend. Locke was much vexed at this, and in a 
Latin letter to Limborch complains of it, as a piece of treachery 
he did not expect in his friend, with a tone of almost angry petu- 
lance, which seems curiously in contrast with the calm and equa- 
ble character of the philosopher. "Nescis," says he, "inquas 
res me conjecisti," and begs Limborch to prevent the further 
circulation of the secret. It is to the honor of Locke that he is 
known to have been dissatisfied with the terms granted in the 
Toleration Act by the new Government after the Revolution, 
and considered them as very inadequate and insufficient. — Lord 
King's Life of John Locke, &,c. vol. I. p. 291, 327, and vol. II, 
p. 310. 

It would seem as if the sound maxim of Turretin must ap- 
prove itself at once to the common sense of mankind, — " in re- 
bus ad salutem necessariis, unusquisque sibi ipsi Theologus es- 
to." Yet so it is, that men have learned nothing more slowly 
and reluctantly, than to tolerate one another's opinions. On 
this subject they would seem to have supposed, that they were 
absolutely required to renounce those principles of forbearance, 
upon which they were accustomed readily to act in other things, 
— as if a belief different from theirs were an offence against 
God, which they were bound not to pardon. Lord Herbert of 
Cherbury, in his Life (p. 169) tells us that when he was in 
France, " Pere Segnerand, confessor to the king, made a ser- 
mon before his majesty upon the text, that we shou'd forgive 
our enemies, upon which argument having said many good 
things, he at last distinguished forgiveness, and said, we were 
indeed to forgive our enemies, but not the enemies of God, such 
as were hereticks, and particularly those of the religion (i. e. of 
the Protestant faith); and that his majesty, as the Most Chris- 
tian King, ought to extirpate them, wheresoever they cou'd be 
found." Thus it is, that intolerance can practice no cruelty, 
for which sophistry cannot find a shelter in some paltry quibble 
or some miserable distinction. The principles of the Reforma- 
tion ought, from their very nature, to produce a spirit of tolera- 
tion; and on the whole they unquestionably have progressively 
had this effect, notwithstanding the frequent and lamentable un- 
faithfulness of Protestants to these principles. Voltaire, who 
had no partiality for any form of Christianity to bias his judg- 
ment,f in the Essai sur les McBurs remarks, — " Le principje 
d'examen adopte par les Protestants conduisait necessairement 
a la tolerance, au lieu que le principe de I'autorite, point fonda- 
mental de la croyance Romaine, en ecarte non moins neces- 
sairement : enfin I'intolerance des Protestants n'etait qu'un reste 
de papisme, que les principes memes sur lesquels la reforme 
etait fondee devaient detruire un jour." But whether Protes- 
tantism can throw off* all blame so easily, or can account for all 
its own mtolerance by calling it " a remnant of popery," may be 
doubted. 

In connexion with this subject^ I am. reminded pf a mistake 



53 

of Hume, who affirms that '' even so great a reasoner as Lord 
Bacon thought that uniformity in religion was absolutely neces- 
sary to the support of government, and that no toleration could 
with safety be given to sectaries." For this assertion he refers 
to the essay De imitate ecclesicB. Now that Essay does by no 
means warrant so broad an inference, as any one may see by an 
examination of it. It contains indeed exceptionable ^expies- 
sions, but it is manifestly not a plea for intolerance ; and Bacon 
closes it by quoting with approbation from one of the Fathers 
the remark, •• that those which held and persuaded pressure of 
consciences, were commonly mterested therein themselves for 
their own ends." 

The noble stand which Roger Williams, at so early a period, 
took in favor of the broadest principles of toleration, does great 
honor to his memory. 

I. 

The account of the sufferings, wanderings and adventures of 
the pilgrims, when they arrived on these shores, is given in a 
manner extremely interesting from its primitive simplicity and 
minuteness by Mourt in his " Relation or Journal of the Begin- 
ning and Proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plim- 
oth in New England," «Si,c., published in London 1622, and in 
Winslow's "Good Newes from New England; or a True Re- 
lation of things very remarkable at the Plantation of Plimolh," 
&c., published in London 1624. The disjointed manner, in 
which these Relations were published by our Historical Socie- 
ty, owing to the circumstance that the abridgement of them in 
Purchas's Pilgrims was the only authority accessible for a long 
time, is much to be regretted. Coll. of Bias s. Hist. Soc. \st 
Series, voh VIII, p. 203 and 239, and 2d Series, vol. IX, p. 26 
and 74. The original edition of Mourt's Relation, as well as 
that of Winslow, is now in the Library of Harvard College, in 
which the collection of books and tracts relating to American 
history and antiquities has become very extensive and valuable. 
Morton's New England's Memorial, which has been so greatly 
enriched by the labors of the Hon. John Davis in his very valu- 
able edition of the book, is so familiarly known that it need 
scarcely be mentioned as an authority. 

In connexion with the reference to the Landing of the Fath- 
ers at Plymouth, it may be observed that there is and has been 
an error of one day in the celebration of that event. It is now 
established, I believe, that the difference between O. S. and N. 
S. was but ten days in the 17th century, and consequently that 
the Landing should in strict propriety be commemorated on the 
21st instead of the 22d of December. Dr. Thacher has dis- 
cussed this subject, and given the authorities, in a note to his 
HisLory of Plymouth, p. 25. The error, however, is not of 
much importance. Whether it be sufficiently important to 
induce a change in the day of the celebration, must be left to 
others to judge. 



54 

Notwithstanding the severe hardships attending the situtation 
of the first settlers at Plymouth, I knotv not what reason Hutch- 
inson had for his doubt, whether, if they had not been encour- 
aged and strengthened by the arrival of Endicot at Salem, who 
prepared the way for the settlement of Massachusetts, "the 
plantation would not in a few years have been deserted, and the 
settlerji have removed to some more fertile part of America, or, 
which is more probable, have returned to England, where, from 
the change oftmies, they might have enjoyed civil and religious 
liberty, ior the sake of which they first quitted it, in as great a 
latitude as their hearts could wish," Hist, of Mass. vol. II, p. 
420. The most appalling of their difficulties were probably 
over, before Endicot settled at Salem. 

The Rev. Dr. Harris, one of the most learned and thorough 
antiquarians iu our country, insists upon a distinction between 
the Plymouth and the Massachusetts settlers, maintaining that 
the former were " >S'e/?o!r«^/6'^s, and, as respected ecclesiastical 
polity. Independents," while the latter, to whom appropriately 
belonged the name of Puritans, " were only Dissenters, and as 
regarded ecclesiastical polity were Congregationalists, and held 
an accordance and union of churches." Memorials of the First 
Church in Dorchester, &c. in two Discourses July 4, 1830. — 
Perhaps there was at one time a good foundation for this dis- 
tinction ; but Hutchinson was probably correct in the remark, 
that *' the Massachusetts people refined and took the name of 
Congregationalists, although it will perhaps be difficult at this 
day to show any material difference between the churches of 
the two colonies; for although Plymouth never established by 
act of government the Massachusetts platform, yet in practice 
they seem generally to have conformed to it.'' — Vol. II; p. 415. 

K. 

To the case of our Fathers may be applied the spirit of that 
beautiful passage in which Lord Bacon, at the close of his re- 
view of philosophy, describes himself as having made an attempt 
to tune the instruments, from which others might produce a full 
and harmonious concert." "Tandem igitur paululum respiran- 
tes, atque ad ea, quae practervecti sumus, oculos retroflectentes, 
hunc tractatum nostrum non absimilem esse censemus sonis 
illis et praeludiis, quae pra3tentant musici, dum fides ad niodu- 
lationem concinnanl; quae ipsa quidem auribus ingratum quid- 
dam et asperum exhibent; at in causa sunt, ut quae sequuntur 
omnia sint suaviora ; sic nimirum nos in animum induximus, 
ut in cithara musarum concinnanda, et ad harmoniam veram 
redigenda, operam navaremus, quo ab aliis postea pulsentur 
chordae meliore digito aut plectro." De Augmentis Scientiarum, 
lib. VIII, c. III. 

L. 

Milton, in one of the fine strains of his indignant eloquence, 
mourns over the folly of the English goTernment in driving from 



55 

their country such multitudes of good men and devoted Chiis- 
tians: — " Next, what numbers of faithful and freeborn English- 
men and good Christians, have been constrained to forsake their 
dearest home, their friends and kindred, whom nothing but the 
wide ocean, and the savage deserts of America could hide and 
shelter from the fury of the bishops. O sir, if we could but see 
the shape of our dear mother England, as poets are wont to give 
a personal form to what they please, how would she appear, 
think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon her head, 
and tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold so many 
of her children exposed at once, and thrust from things of dear- 
est necessity, because their conscience could not assent to things 
which the bishops thought indifferent? What more binding 
than conscience? What more free than indifferency? Cruel 
then !nust that indifferency needs be, that shall violate the strict 
necessity of conscience ! merciless and inhuman that free choice 
and liberty that shall break asunder the bonds of religion ! Let 
the astrologer be disniayed at the portentous blaze of comets, 
and impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and changes 
to states ; I shall believe tliere cannot be a more ill-boding sign 
to a nation, God turn the omen from us ! than when the inhabi- 
tants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are enforced by 
heaps to forsake their native country." — Of Reformation in 
England, &lc. book II. 

M. 

Berkeley's beautiful " Verses on the Prospect of planting 
Arts and Learning in America" (Works, vol. Ill, p. 233) have 
been so often quoted in whole or in part, that it is merely ne- 
cessary to refer to them in this connexion. One of his biogra- 
phers has said of them, that " in them another age, perhaps, will 
acknowledge the old conjunction of the prophetic character 
with that of the poet to have again taken place." 

Bishop Watson, in a letter written to Dr. Falconer in 1804, 
speaking of the pjobability of new positions to be taken by the 
political powers of the word, gives it as his opinion, "that 
America will become the greatest naval power on the globe, and 
be replenished by migrations of oppressed and discontented peo- 
ple from every part of Europe." — Anecdotes of the Life of Rich- 
ard Watson, written by himself, &c. p. 327. 

There is wisdom in cherishing bright hopes of the future ; 
and we should cleave to them till duty or facts forbid us to be 
blind to darker prospects. But it remains yet to be seen, wheth- 
er it shall be the high vocation of our country to realize the 
splendid promise written for her in the following stanzas of an 
English poet, who, with great faults, has many passages of 
striking power and beauty. 

There is a People mighty in its 30\jlh, 

A land beyond the Oceans of the West, 

Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth 

Are worshipp'd ; from a glorious mothei's breast, 



5G 

Who, since high Athens fell, among (he resi 
Sate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe. 
By inbred monsters outraged and oppress'd, 
Turns to her chainless child for succor now, . 
It draws the milk of Power in Wisdom's fullest flow. 

That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze 
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume 
Floats moveless on the slorm, and in the blaze 
Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapt in gloom; 
An epitaph of glory for the tomb 
Of murder'd Europe may thy fame be made, 
Great People: as the sands shalt thou become; 
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade; 
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade. 

I would fain hope that no conflict of interests or of heated 
passions, in our confederacy, may compel us to read so beauti- 
ful a tribute with the feeling of sadness arising from dark and 
fearful apprehensions. The old Roman maxim was never to 
desvair of the republic ; and it is a maxim which we should not 
lightly abandon. 

N. 
This illustration is borrowed from Sprat, who, in speaking of 
the proper manner of imitating the ancients, says — "There are 
two principal ways of preserving the names of those that are 
past ; the one by pictures^ the other by children. The pictures 
may be so made, that they may far nearer resemble the origin- 
al, than children do their parents ; and yet all mankind choose 
rather to keep themselves alive by children, than by the other. 
It is best for the philosophers of this age to imitate the ancients 
as their children, to have their blood derived down to them, but 
to add a new complexion and life of their own ; — while those 
that endeavour to come near them in every line and feature, 
may rather be called their dead pictures or statues, than their 
genuine offspring." History of the Royal Society of London, 
&c. London. 1734. p. 51. 



y^^^ ^ ^>^^^<^^ r^ 



REV. MR. BLAGDEN'S ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



PILGRIM SOCIETY OF PLYMOUTH, 



DECEMBER 22, 1834. 



yy<^ «_ic.^-^ 



/>-<^>^S2^, 



gps 



iffiffie= 



^i..^ 



cS^iSd 



REV. DH. WORCESTER'S 



3 PLYMOUTH DISCOURSE, g 



1848. 



Q^^^ 







^'NaroH.O; 






;^^ 



IXtm (£n%[anVs ©lors anb Croton. 



DISCOURSE, 



DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, MASS. 



DECEMBER 22, 1848. 



BY SAMUEL M. ffOKCBSTER, D. D., 

Pastor of the Tabernacle Church.. Salem. 






^xjJRATiY ' 1^^^^'*^ lE^itiott* 



BOSTON : 

PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN, 24 CONGRESS STREET. 
1849. 



\ai,^3^ 



It has been designed in the following pages, to exhibit " The Pilgrims " 
and " The Fathers," in their true evangelical spirit ; and to present a rapid, 
yet distinct outline of the ecclesiastical history of New England, in some- 
what more of a missionary point of view, than has been common. Some 
passages of the Discourse were omitted, at the time it was delivered. 

The day was very \infavorable for a large gathering, and but a small 
number assembled in the house of God. There were just about as many 
present, as the whole number of the emigrants, who came in the May- 
flower ; which, some may forget, was one hundred and one. But there 
was a grandeur in the scene, as the storm sounded from the ocean and 
above the summits of the hills, which few would venture to describe. All 
nature around seemed to unite in the celebration of the " Landing of the 
Pilgrims." No one who joined in the religiouB exercises, could have 
needed much aid to his imagination and sensibilities, as he silently remem- 
bered those, whom he had come to honor, — when, 

' Amidst the storm they sang, 

And the stars heard and the sea \ 
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
To the anthem of the free ! ' 



DISCOURSE. 



PROVERBS, XVII. 6. 

childben's children are the crown of old men, and the glory of 
children are their fathers. 

In respect to human happiness and glory, there is a 
remarkable difference between the words of the " holy- 
men who of old spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost," and those of other men generally, whatever their 
land or their language. Other men speak of happiness, 
without any reference to "joy in God," or ''delight in 
his law " ; and of glory, when the Most High, who only 
is "great," "wonderful in counsel and excellent in work- 
ing," "is not in all their thoughts " of greatness, of wis- 
dom, and of excellency. But they, who, " at sundry 
times and in divers manners," have spoken of happiness 
and glory, in the name of the " Father of lights " and 
"the God of comfort," always speak of happiness^ as but 
" the pleasure of sin," and oi glory ^ as but '' a vain show " 
and a fatal delusion, unless the " soul doth magnify the 
Lord," and the "spirit rejoice in God " the " Saviour." 

It is, therefore, undoubtedly to be understood, that the 
" old men " who would find the " crown " of their earthly 
satisfactions and hopes in " children's children," were 
those pre-eminently, who had feared the Lord from their 
youth, and whose " hoary head was a crown of glory," 
because " found in the way of righteousness." And while 



4 

the ancient people of God accounted a numerous family 
and posterity a very special and signal favor, it was one 
of the most dreadful of all bitter experiences, to have 
sons and daughters, whose vicious and impious conduct 
would bring down their " grey hairs with sorrow to the 
grave." Hence "children's children " could never be the 
''crown" of the "old men," whom God would "not cast 
off in their old age," — unless they "walked in the stat- 
utes and ordinances of the law of the Lord," and gave 
promise of transmitting the legacy of a godly example to 
their own "children's children." 

" A man's descendants," says one of our wisest com- 
mentators, " ought to be his honor and comfort in old 
age. His children should be educated in such a manner, 
as may warrant a confidence that their pious and prudent 
conduct will render them such, and that they will train 
up their families in like manner ; and it is the duty of 
children, and children's children, to consult the credit of 
their progenitors, as far as it can be made consistent with 
superior obligations. Parents also should act in such a 
manner, that their children and posterity may be respected 
for their sakes, and have cause to rejoice in their relation 
to persons of such piety and wisdom. And thus it will 
be, in proportion as men attend to the dictates of heavenly 
wisdom." 

In this free exposition of the spirit of the significant 
and beautiful language of the text, we have, as I con- 
ceive, a just and interesting view of the relation of 
children to parents, and of posterity to their ancestors. 
Natural talents and dispositions are very far from being 
always hereditary. Yet we often perceive as marked a 
likeness of intellectual endowments and original elements 
of character, between a parent and his offspring, and be- 
tween progenitors and their progeny, as we ever see of 
correspondence and resemblance in the features of coun- 
tenance, which unequivocally proclaim kindred blood and 



a common lineage. And while " that which is born of 
the Spirit, is spirit," by a divine and not a human genera- 
tion, we are so instructed by the " words which the Holy 
Ghost teacheth," and by the history of Providence, in 
respect to the covenant with Abraham, comprehending all 
believers in Christ among the Gentiles as well as the 
Jews, — that it should be accounted no strange thing, but 
a delightful fulfilment of the promises, if children, in this 
our beloved New England, should be found partakers of 
the richest of all the blessings of a God of love. And 
this too by their relation, not merely to parents, friends 
and benefactors whom they have seen and known, but to 
those fore-fathers and fove-mothers, who, for our sakes, 
and for God's purposes, endured so much, and who have 
long since been translated from the duties, responsibilities, 
and trials of earth to a glorified immortality in heaven. 

The nations of this Western hemisphere and of the 
Old world, are now a spectacle of extraordinary interest 
to every intelligent and reflecting man in this country. 
We have hopes or fears, or hopes a7id fears, for our own, 
and for other lands. These are different in different indi- 
viduals, but in all are materially affected by personal reli- 
gious principles and opinions. We may be unanimous in 
believing and proclaiming our own, our " native land, of 
every land the pride," while yet we may widely differ, 
when we trace our distinction as a people, to its real origin 
or source, through all the connected agencies, circum- 
stances, and influences. And as we judge of our own 
land, in its early history and its present and prospective 
condition, so are we likely to judge of the state and pros- 
pects of those kingdoms or republics, which are now as 
'' raging waves of the sea ; " and so are we likely to deter- 
mine what may be our duty, as a nation, or as individuals, 
at this eventful conjuncture of the world's affairs. 

In general terms, we refer to our ancestors and to the 
institutions which the Pilgrims and the Fathers of New 



Eijgland have founded and cherished, when we would 
explain the peculiar characteristics of their descendants, 
and rationally account for the manifold and unequalled 
excellency of "our goodly heritage." Some will make 
this reference, but with very large reservations, if not 
very significant and somewhat inconsistent qualifications. 
There are those who will " garnish the sepulchres " of 
the "Pilgrims" of Plymouth Rock, and the "Fathers"* 
their associates of Salem, Charlestown, Boston, and other 
primitive settlements ; while they are slow to recognize 
the true secret of the moral worth, and energy, and en- 
durance, by which those godly sires achieved their noble 
deeds and won their renowned conquests and possessions. 
There are theorists and dreamers, who would have all 
forsake " the old paths," and enter upon one or another 
individual or social experiment, in full confidence of a 
progress and happiness, which no received form of Chris- 
tianity can ever secure or promote. On the other hand, 
we have those, and I bless God that the number is not- 
small, who are more and more persuaded, that it was the 
distinctive faith, and the life inspired by that faith, of 
our ancestors, to which, under the watchful and benefi- 
cent care of their covenant God, we are now indebted 
for all that makes the difference between New England 
and New Grenada, or between Massachusetts and Mexico. 
It is believed also, with all the confidence of a self-evi- 
dent certainty, that to the same causes we are to ascribe 
the marvellous contrast of the American Revolution to 
the first revolution in France, and to all the other 
revolutions which have followed, on either side of the 
Atlantic. 

If we difi'er in regard to the leading and legitimate 
causes, which, working out their effects in past genera- 

* Those who came to Plymouth are properly called " The Pilgrims " ; — 
because they had sojourned in Holland. We speak of them as "the 
Fathers." But " the Fathers " were not all " Pilgrims." 



tions, have crowned the present with its chief blessing 
and glory, we shall of course differ in our judgment of 
the best means and aims, for the highest good of the 
generations which shall come after us. In our amazing 
increase of territory and population, we have some start- 
ling questions to be settled, in respect to which we 
must act in our political capacity, as citizens. But it is 
to me a great comfort to know, that there is a Power and 
Wisdom above all mortal power and policy ; and that 
whatever rulers or statesmen may decree, or may strive to 
accomplish. He who says to the ocean billows — '' Hith- 
erto shalt thou come, but no further," — will, in his faith- 
fulness and loving kindness, and in his own sovereign 
right and appointed time, extend the dominion of truth 
and holiness ; and will multiply, by thousands of thou- 
sands, the FREEMEN, who cau shout the triumphs and 
rejoice in the felicities of "the glorious liberty of the 
children of God." 

Of all that have ever lived, there have never been any, 
upon the broad face of the earth, who more devoutly, 
than the '* old men," our fathers^ fathers, adopted the 
true sentiment of the words, that "children's children are 
the crown of old men." They are such, be it remem- 
bered, not by their numbers, or wealth, or worldly emi- 
nence, but hy serving their generation according to the 
will of God ; or by cherishing and spreading the institu- 
tions and influences of that kingdom, which is established 
in the hearts of the "faithful in Christ Jesus." And the 
day is far distant, before any who reverence the memory 
of illustrious progenitors, will have more reason than our- 
selves, to respond their loud Amen to the words — " And 
the glory of children are their fathers ! " 

From the character of the Fathers of New England, 
and from the history of their children and "children's 
children," I propose to show, that, in accordance with the 
genuine import of the sacred aphorism of the text, — we 



have the most grateful occasion to praise God, both for 
the " Glory " and the '^ Crown." 

For a long period, America was to Christians of Europe 
the great field of missionary effort. It is even maintained, 
that the inspiring idea of Columbus was derived from the 
prophecies ; and that Isabella, his patron, made the con- 
version of the heathen an object " paramount to all the 
rest." When our Fathers came hither, these were all 
^^ foreign parts ;" it was all heathen ground. Long after 
their coming, the churches in England were accustomed 
to pray in their songs : — 

" Dark America convert, 
And every pagan land." 

And if I do not mistake, these lines are still sung, strange- 
ly as they sound to the ear of a New England man who 
may chance to hear them. So vast is the change ; so 
accustomed are we to our Christian' institutions ; that we 
are all in danger of forgetting that we live upon the soil 
that has been rescued from Paganism. Never ^ never 
should it he forgotten! And never should it be forgotten, 
that the settlement of New England was in reality, though 
not in name, a Missionary Enterprise. Or if you please to 
call it by other terms, you may call it a Mission of Evan- 
gelical Colonization ; and you may proclaim it in every 
language, as the sublimest mission of modern times. 

The History of New England is yet to be written. 
Posterity may, perhaps, do justice to the memory of our 
Fathers. But it is incumbent on their living " children's 
children" to acquaint themselves with their character, 
and never be unmindful of their extraordinary virtues 
and achievements. Those persecuted and exiled Puritans 
had no such purpose in coming hither, as has often been 
ascribed to them, even by some of their favored descend- 
ants. It was not for political immunities, nor republican 
institutions. In the " love of Christ constraining " them, 



it was for the advancement of that Reformation^ which, a 
century after it had moved all Christendom, was still but 
in part accomplished ; for they were not satisfied, that the 
" Prince of life " should only be acknowledged by the 
church, in his prophetical and priestly offices. It was, that 
as " the Lord's freemen," they might give him his kingly 
RIGHT, and thus be " complete in him, which is the Head 
of all principality and power." It was, that in the "liber- 
ty," ''wherewith the Son makes free," they might enjoy 
the gospel, without " human mixtures and temptations ; " 
and worship in peace, '' while worshipping in spirit and in 
truth." It was for the holier and surer training of a conse- 
crated progeny, at the distance of a '' nine hundred league 
ocean," from the corruptions of the old world. And not 
least of all in their desires and hopes, was the salvation of 
the benighted heathen, while in every way which should 
be prepared before them, they would toil and pray for the 
enlargement of the kingdom of " the Lord of all."* 

These were their motives and ends in separating them- 
selves from the Church of England, which originally 
adopted the Reformation from paramount purposes of state 
policy. Above all things, it was in their hearts to call no 
man master, but to obey Him as their King, whose in- 
spired word was their sun, and whose atoning blood was 
their eternal life. For this it was, that in the pure and 
undying '' love of their espousals," they " went after him 
in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown." And in 
their own graphic expression, it was indeed in a '' wilder- 
ness world," that they built their habitations and their 
sanctuaries. For an object, holy and sublime as ever 
angels celebrated, they lived here in hunger and in cold, 
and toiled and watched in weariness and in painfulness ; 
where, when the bullock lowed, the wild beast answered 
him ; and where, at the rustling of a leaf, the fond mother 

* See Appendix, A. 



1§ 

clasped her infant closer to her bosom. All the charters 
enjoined upon the colonists the duty of instructing and 
christianizing the pagan aborigines. The seal of the 
Massachusetts colony is a true exponent of the aims and 
aspirations of our fathers. In expressive harmony with 
their benignant desires, they adopted the figure of an abo- 
riginal, with the memorable w^ords of " the man of Mace- 
donia." Nothing, therefore, was further from their hearts 
than the wish or the thought of colonizing an immense 
" howling wilderness," and redeeming it for " a goodly 
heritage," at the price of the blood of the children of its 
forests and its streams. And if the venerated Robinson 
had occasion to write to the Governor of Plymouth, — ' O 
that you had converted some, before you had killed any,' 
— it was not because these were wantonly destroyed, or 
hunted down as " tawny and bloody salvages ; " nor be- 
cause their moral ignorance and wretchedness were not a 
distinct object of early and intense solicitude. In less 
than two years, I think it was, one of the Plymouth set- 
tlers was specially designated to promote the conversion 
of the Indians. 

In the labors of several pastors before Eliot and the 
first Mayhew, as well as in the more celebrated exertions 
of these devoted evangelists, and in the contributions 
and personal sacrifices of those who out of their " deep 
poverty " sustained them, the first generation of New 
England furnished examples of as self-denying and ex- 
alted missionary spirit, as has ever yet found a record or a 
memorial in the uninspired annals of redemption. And 
to all appearance, we may ourselves hardly expect to see 
the day, when '' the thousand of thousands " shall become 
as <'the little one " was, and the " strong nation " as " the 
small one," in the all-pervading and ennobling power of 
such zeal, for the salvation of the perishing. 

The honor of the first plan in England, for sending 
missionaries to the heathen, has by mistake been given to 



/ 



11 

that wonderful man, whose character is now at last re- 
ceiving a just and brilliant vindication, against the atro- 
cious calumnies, which have prevailed for two centuries. 
But the magnificent design of Cromwell, which contem- 
plated the establishment of a Council for the Protestant 
religion, in opposition to the Jesuitical combination at 
Rome, and which was intended to embrace the East and 
West Indies, in its fourth department of operation, — was 
more than thirty years later, than the manifesto of the 
Pilgrims, — declaratory of the "great hope and inward 
zeal they had, of laying some good foundation for the 
propagation and advancement of the gospel in these re- 
mote parts of the world " ! 

A Society had been formed in England, and collections /^ 
had been taken, in aid of the missions of Eliot and his 
associates. It is beyond a doubt, that the first settlers of 
New England were the first Englishmen, wfio devised " 

and executed a mission to the heathen ! •> | 

As early as 1646, the Legislature of Massachusetts ^ 
passed an act for the propagation of the gospel among the 
Indians. From that day onward, more or less of legisla- \^^ 
tive provision has been made for their religious instruc- "^ 

tion, as well as their social comfort. And it may be 
remarked in a word, that with all the changes that have 
passed over the " fathers " and the "children's children," 
there never has been a time, when they have not fur- 
nished some laborers in the heathen part of this western 
world.* 

As it respects the religious faith of the Fathers of New 
England, there can be no good reason for any misunder- 
standing, mistake, or misstatement. They were Trini- 
tarians and Calvinists, intelligently, thoroughly, and most 
earnestly. In church government, they were much per- 

* See Appendix, B. 



I* 

plexed, in shaping their mould of Congregationalism, so 
as to be neither Brownists or Independents, nor Presby- 
terians. A great and arduous work it was which fash- 
ioned and executed the Cambridge Platform of 1648 ; — 
according to which, mainly and substantially, we have 
the prevailing ecclesiastical polity of New England. 

Some turbulent and innovating spirits, like Roger Wil- 
liams, bewildered enthusiasts like the antinomian Ann 
Hutchinson, and incomprehensible schismatics like the 
pestilent Gorton, made no small trouble by their opposi- 
tion to the earliest civil and religious order of the Massa- 
chusetts Colony. But out of more than seventy minis- 
ters among a population of thirty thousand, there is no 
reason to suppose, that there was a single one, who did 
not receive the doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, as one God ; or who did not receive as well as 
avow, most openly and decidedly, the fundamental doc- 
trines of the present faith of our evangelical Congrega- 
tional churches. 

It was to a few individuals among the laity, beyond a 
doubt, that Edward Johnson refers, who, as early as 1654, 
had published the fact, which I here notice, without any 
invidious intent, that, besides the Antinomians, Fami- 
lists, Conformitants, and Seekers, " there were Arrians, 
Arnmiians, and Quakers. ^^ 

A most egregious and singular error has been committed 
in representing the founders of the First Church in Salem, 
— the first, as I need not say, in the Massachusetts Colo- 
ny, — as having organized themselves, without any Con- 
fession of Faith ; and as having had a form of Covenant, 
designedly so framed, as to give liberty to all, who might 
choose to call themselves Christians, to enter their com- 
munion and fellowship. What has been generally print- 
ed, for a hundred and fifty years, as the First Covenant of 
that Church, and adopted Aug. 6, 1629, is not that Cove- 



18 

nant. It was adopted as a Special Covenant, in 1636. — 
The Covenant of 1629 was a very brief and comprehen- 
sive document, by which the signers pledged themselves 
to walk together in obedience to the rules of the Gospel ; 
while the ''Confession of Faith" was as explicit and de- 
cided, — Trinitarian and Calvinistic, — as would of course 
be expected from men, who would rather have been burnt 
at the stake, than have given the least occasion for a 
doubt, concerning their interpretation of '' the faith once 
delivered to the saints." 

The error in respect to the Covenant, commonly printed 
as the First Covenant in the Massachusetts Colony, — was 
discovered a few years ago, during an investigation of the 
history of the Tabernacle Church, a Church which origi- 
nated in a secession from the First Church, in 1735. 
Soon afterwards, a printed copy was found of the Con- 
fession and Covenant, for suhstance^ as adopted in Salem, 
6th of August, 1629. It is the identical document, 
which was printed for the use of the churches, when 
they so generally renewed their covenant in 1680 ; and 
when the design was, as far as possible, to unite all to- 
gether in one common concert of recognition of the doc- 
trinal and practical sentiments of the venerable Church, of 
which Higginson and Skelton were jointly pastor and 
teacher, and of which Endicott, the first Governor of 
Massachusetts Colony, was a leading member. 

Hugh Peters was the pastor of the First Church, in 
Salem, at the time the Covenant was propounded and 
adopted, which has so unaccountably passed into so many 
" Historical Collections " and discourses, as if that of 
1629. The evidence that it was a new covenant, which 
was required by the disorders occasioned more especially 
by the movements of Roger Williams, is perfectly con- 
clusive. And as the very preamble, as well as other in- 
ternal evidence, is so palpably against the idea of its 
being the first Covenant, — it would seem to be most ex- 



i4 

traordinary, that so important an error of history should 
have been committed and blindly perpetuated.* 

With the doctrines of Arius and Pelagius, of Arminius 
and Socinus, and with all the prominent objections to the 
Trinitarian and Calvinistic faith, the first pastors and 
members of the New England churches were no less, if 
not more perfectly acquainted, than at the present day 
are pastors and members of the churches generally, which 
are built upon the same foundation. — Those early minis- 
ters had been educated in the English universities, and 
had been called to investigate every article of their reli- 
gious belief, — with every advantage which was needed for 
a correct judgment. 

When in 1648, the ministers of the four Colonies of 
Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven, 
(as the Colonies were then geographically divided and 
named,) assembled in the Synod at Cambridge, "their 
learning, their holiness, their purity struck all men that 
knew them, with admiration. They were Timothies in 
their houses, Chrysostoms in their pulpits, and Augus- 
tines in their disputations." Such was the witness of 
the venerable John Higgiuson, of the First Church in 
Salem, and of William Hubbard of Ipswich, who, at the 
time they wrote, near the close of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, were the two oldest ministers of New England. 

The idea, which some have attempted to disseminate, 
— that our fathers lived in a dark age, and would not have 
been what they were in their denominational sentiments, 
if they had lived at a later period, for example, in our 
times, has not the least foundation in history or in reason. 
It might just as well be asserted and argued, that they 
would have been atheistical transcendentalists or Four- 
ierites, as that, in any essential point, they would have 
been otherwise than what they were, namely, — avowed 

* See Appendix, C. 



15 

and firm believers in the Confession of Faith of the 
Westminster Assembly of Divines ! — And it has been 
stated as a fact, which speaks whole volumes in few 
words, — that, for one hundred and fifty years, such a 
wretched creature, such a living monstrosity, as an infidel, 
was not known among their children ! 

How could they have been otherwise than they were, 
with their holy reverence for the Scriptures of the Old 
and New Testament throughout, as the inspired Word of 
God ; as the infallible repository of their faith and the 
rules of their life in Christ ; and as the ultimate appeal in 
all questions of theology and of morals ? The Bible 
they exalted above all things human. They were "not 
ashamed of the Gospel," any more than was Paul. They 
"gloried in the cross." They "sanctified the Lord God 
in their hearts ; " and were " ready always to give an 
answer to every man that asked a reason of the hope that 
was in " them, " with meekness and fear," — -fear of God, 
not that " fear of man " which " bringeth a snare." They 
were honest, as every one must admit, who knows any- 
thing of them, — and were most hearty in all which they 
professed to believe, in answer to the question, — " What 
saith the Scripture ? " 

With special allusion to the early ministers, it was 
written a century and a half since ; — " Indeed the minis- 
ters of New England have this to recommend them unto 
a good regard with the crown of England, that the most 
flourishing plantation in all the American dominions of 
that crown, is more owing to them than to any sort of 
men whatever." They well deserved that eulogium. It 
is almost impossible to estimate their influence upon the 
world, in an epoch which Merle D'Aubigne has character- 
ized as " one of the most important in modern times, so 
far as concerns the new developments of nations." 

At no time, since the settlement of the country, have 
the people at large had so much, probably, of direct pas- 



u 

toral supervision, as in the first years of the colonies. A 
number of the churches, though quite small, had in effect 
two pastors, one of whom, called Teacher, had it in charge 
to discourse of systematic theology, rather than deliver 
words of "exhortation," upon matters of daily Christian 
practice. And of more than one, doubtless, it might have 
been said, as it was of a pastor in the neighborhood of 
Salem, — that '' he v.^as a tree of knowledge laden with 
fruit, which the children could reach.^^ 

By the laws of the Massachusetts Colony, all dwellings 
must be located within half a mile, or at farthest within 
a mile, of the place of worship. This was doubtless for 
mutual defence against the Indians, when almost every 
man carried his fire-arms to the sanctuary, as well as into 
the field of his labor ; also for the greater convenience of 
assembling on the Lord's day, and for the weekly lecture 
of Thursday, which was of hardly less account than the 
services of the Sabbath. There was thus a more frequent 
and intimate communion with one another as of the same 
" household of God," and fellow-citizens of *' the com- 
monwealth of Israel." This was a very different mode 
of living from that of the Southern colonists, upon scat- 
tered plantations. 

At the first, the greater part of adults, both male and 
female, were church-members, by profession of hope in 
Christ, as pardoned and renewed. There were delightful 
seasons of special awakening in those days ; and in some 
of the churches, as in that of Cambridge, under the min- 
istry of Thomas Shepard, it was expected as a matter of 
course, that some new cases of conviction, if not of con- 
version, would be manifest every Sabbath. 

So indispensable was family prayer to the order of 
every dwelling, that you might have visited a hundred or 
several hundred contiguous families in succession, without 
findmg one, in which the morning and evening sacrifice 
were not off*ered. For a long period, exceptions were 



17 

extremely few. And would, that in our day, those who 
offer prayer in the family, in the closet, and in other 
places, were, in as great a proportion, as strong as were 
the fathers in the faith of the Abrahamic covenant, and 
all the promises to God's people ! 

" Prayer and preaching were the living principle of their 
institutions ; special prayer upon special emergencies, with 
the confident expectation of direct and specific answers ; 
preaching, the most plain and pungent, enforcing those 
peculiar doctrines of grace which humble man and exalt 
God, and which have in every age been made powerful 
to 'the pulling down of strong holds.' There was much 
also in the state of their infant settlements to favor the 
desired results. They were a world within themselves, 
cut off by their distance and poverty from most of the 
alluring objects which seize on the hearts of the uncon- 
verted in a more advanced state of society. They were 
all of one faith [in every vital point] ; there was none 
among them to question or deny the necessity of a work 
of the Spirit ; and the minds of their children were pre- 
pared, by their early religious training, to bow submissive 
under the sacred influence. In these circumstances, how 
natural was it to multiply the means of grace, upon any 
appearance of increased seriousness ; to press with re- 
doubled zeal and frequency to the throne of God in prayer ; 
to urge their children and dependents, with all the fervor 
of Christian affection, to seize the golden opportunity, 
and ' make their calling and election sure ' ; to remove, 
as far as possible, every obstacle of business or amusement 
out of the way ; and to concentrate the entire interest of 
their little communities on the one object of the soul's 
salvation ! How natural that these labors and prayers 
should be blessed of God ; that the truth preached under 
these circumstances should be made, like ' the fire and 
the hammer, to break in pieces the flinty rock ' ; that ex- 
traordinary effusions of the Holy Spirit should be granted, 
3 



18 

and that there should be an ' awakenmg,' as it was then 
called, or, in modern language, a Revival of Religion."* 

There were some sad departures from a strict and close 
walk with God ; and flagrant instances of breach of 
church covenant. New England was better far than the 
Goshen of Egypt, but it was no part of the garden of 
Eden, from which "God drove out the man," from whom 
our fathers had their descent. Of the general state of 
morals, however, in a comprehensive view, we shall prob- 
ably not be much misled, if we draw our inferences from 
the witness of an intelligent contemporary, who, with the 
prejudices of the Church Establishment in the mother 
country, resided a few years in New England, previous to 
1641. According to him, one might spend a year in 
going from place to place, and not " see a drunkard, or 
hear an oath, or see a beggar " ! f 

As the statutes of the Mosaic code were taken as the 
general laws of the colonists, the Sabbath was begun at 
sunset on Saturday evening. It was observed also with 
great strictness, in all domestic arrangements and duties. 
And it was, as many may not be fully aware, the strict- 
ness of the observance of the Sabbath, as compared with 
the practice on the Continent and in Great Britain, from 
which, more than from any other difference, the Puritans 
first obtained their specific name. 

" It was happy for our progenitors," said the late amia- 
ble and accomplished Dr. Kirkland, in his discourse de- 
livered at Plymouth, forty-five years since, — '' that they 
brought with them into the wilderness the confidential 
associates of their domestic labors and domestic cares. 
Throughout their arduous enterprise, they experienced 
the inexpressible value of that conjugal friendship, which 
no change of fortune can weaken or interrupt ; in which 



C. A. Goodrich., D, D., in Baird's " Religion in America," p. 197. 
t Thomas Lechford. 



19 

^tenderness is heightened by distress, and attachment 
cemented by the tears of sorrow.' The family society 
began with the civil and ecclesiastical society. Family 
religion and order began with the family society. To 
Him who had directed them in a right way for them- 
selves, for their little ones, and for all their substance, 
' the saint, the father and the husband ' was accustomed 
to offer in the presence of his household his daily and 
nightly sacrifices of praise. Regular and beautiful was 
the church, in which he who ministered, had only to 
place in order in the building, those materials, which pa- 
rents had previously framed and adjusted to his house." 

I need only allude to the early establishment of free 
schools, that every child might be taught the elements of 
what is understood by " popular education " ; — and for 
the express purpose, that all might be able to read for 
themselves the Word of God, and be fortified against the 
machinations, both of Papacy and Prelacy, in particular, 
and of all the pretences and allurements of " false apos- 
tles " in general. And within ten years after the begin- 
ning of the permanent settlements in Massachusetts, the 
College at Cambridge was established, that "the children 
of the old men" might not fail of a supply of pastors, 
who would " feed the flock of God," " with knowledge 
and understanding." * 

It was eminently of divine favor, that so many learned, 
evangelical, and eloquent ministers arrived in New Eng- 
land before 1640. Some few of them went back at the 
time of the civil wars, and after the establishment of the 
Commonwealth, under Cromwell. Such was the change 
of times, it has been quaintly recorded, — "that instead of 
Old England's driving its best people into New, it was 
itself turned into New." During the troubles at home, 
opportunity was given for the progress of the experi- 

■*■ See Appendix, D. 



w 

mental institutions of the colonists, to a maturity of 
consolidation, which could bid defiance, though not 
without some misgiving of alarm, to the insidious and 
deadly machinations of the profligate court and the 
godless hierarchy of Charles II. And from that day to the 
present, it is undeniable, that the mother country has 
experienced an incessant and most powerful reaction upon 
herself, of the principles and the example of the exiled 
founders of the mighty fabric, which is now the wonder 
of all nations. 

But of the first ministers, who, under the pressure of 
intolerance, or in despair of the progress of the Reforma- 
tion in their native island, came to these '' foreign parts," 
and to a pagan and savage wilderness of an extent 
unknown and unimagined, by far the greater part re- 
mained, died among their own people, and were gathered 
by devout men to their burial, amidst lamentations and 
gratulations. They displayed a faith in God, as a 
Rewarder, an energy in view of obstacles, a constancy 
under discouragements, and a fortitude in suffering, which 
are beyond all human praise or reward. 

And, my brethren, if we would inherit the same 
promises, which sustained them so triumphantly to the 
last, we shall be slow to forget, that, from the ordinance 
of Heaven, a New England was originated by self-denial 
for Christ's supremacy ; implicit reliance upon the witness 
of the Holy Scriptures, to the utter exclusion of all 
'' philosophy and vain deceit ; " a well-educated and truly 
pious ministry, who "shunned not to declare the whole 
counsel of God ; " sound Calvinistic doctrine, fearlessly 
addressed to the understanding and the conscience ; 
prayer without ceasing, like that at Bethel, at Carmel, 
and in " the upper room " at Jerusalem ; family religion, 
with a confiding, grateful self-application of the Abra- 
hamic covenant ; fraternal or congregational independence 
of the churches ; universal instruction, literary and Chris- 



21 

tian ; and the remembrance of the Lord's day, according 
to the Fourth Commandment, in its original import, and 
as written by the " finger of God," for an everlasting 
statute and memorial. 

It is, as I regard it, a most instructive fact of our early 
history, that the period during which the '•^old ministers " 
flourished in New England, was most remarkable for 
prayer of Puritan fathers and mothers, on both sides of 
the Atlantic, that all those who were " bone of their bone 
and flesh of their flesh " might be ^' sons and daughters 
of the Lord Almighty." They deprecated as the direst 
of curses " a seed of evil-doers, children that are corrupt- 
ers." " No greater joy " could they have, than '' to see 
their children walking in the truth." And many were 
the supplications of the pastors, like that of the venerable 
Higginson and Hubbard, at the close of the century in 
which New England began, — '' that God would raise up 
from time to time, those who may be the happy instru- 
ments of bringing down the hearts of the parents into the 
children ! " 

Born of such parents, baptized in real faith, and nur- 
tured for Christ and the church, not for worldly aggran- 
dizement or splendor, a very large number, as would be 
inferred from the sketches already drawn, became sincere 
followers of the Son of God, and shone brightly as 
" lights in the world." " Plain mechanics have I known," 
says a writer in 1681, '' well catechised and humble 
Christians, excellent in practical piety ; they kept their 
station ; did not aspire to be preachers ; but for gifts of 
prayer, few clergymen must come near them."* 

Among the children and grand-children of "the fathers," 
it was not at all difficult to find those, who were as stead- 
fast and efficient, as were Caleb and Joshua, in their 
co-operation with Moses and Aaron. Situated as they 



♦ Mather's Magn. Vol. I. 221. 



22 

were, in temporal privations and perils ; — obliged to 
submit to every hardship and encounter innumerable 
obstacles to pecuniary advancement ; an immense work 
to be done in the accomplishment of their purposes and 
measurable realization of their hopes and their faith, — 
their circumstances were highly suited to awaken the 
general mass to no ordinary degrees of physical, religious, 
and intellectual activity. The indomitable energy of the 
men of that early period, is vibrating yet in every pulsa- 
tion of some millions of their resolute and still advancing 
posterity. 

The Fathers held in common with other Puritans, 
*' that all men are by nature destitute of true piety ; 
that they naturally grow up in the practice of sin ; and 
that no one becomes religiouS; except by a change in his 
habits of thought, feeling and conduct, which they 
ascribed to the special operation of the Holy Spirit as its 
supernatural cause. They believed that the truly pious 
are ordinarily conscious of this change in the action of 
their own minds when it takes place, and are able to 
describe it, though they may not then know that the 
change of which they are conscious is regeneration. In 
some cases, they admitted, the man is not aware of any 
change at the time of his conversion ; yet he will be 
conscious of exercises afterward, such as no unregenerate 
man ever has. Some may be regenerated in infancy, 
which it is lawful for us to hope is the case with all who 
die before they are old enough to profit by the external 
means of grace. If any of them live to maturity, they 
will not be able to remember the time of their change, 
but they will be conscious of sensible love to God and 
holiness, penitence for sin and other pious exercises, and 
can give an account of them. They believed, therefore, 
that every converted person, who has arrived at the age 
of discretion, has a religious ' experience ' which he can 
tell, and by hearing which, other pious persons may judge 



23 

of his piety. The evidence thus afforded, however, was 
to be compared with his conduct in all the relations of 
life, and if this also was ' such as becometh saints,' he 
was to be accounted a pious man." 

Further ; " a church they held to be ' a company of 
faithful persons, [so says the Platform of 1648,] i. e., 
persons who have saving faith, regenerate persons, agree- 
ing and consenting to meet constantly together in one 
congregation for the public worship of God and their 
mutual edification ; which real agreement and consent 
they do express by their constant practice in coming 
together for the worship of God, and by their religious 
subjection,' that is, by their subjecting themselves volun- 
tarily from religious motives, ' to the ordinances of God 
therein.' " * 

Moreover, it was most obvious, that the Congregational 
church government could never be administered properly, 
if all persons who pleased, could obtain admission to the 
churches. Men of no piety might soon outnumber all 
others, and the church would become but a name of dis- 
tinction from the world. 

Hence the mode of admission to the New England 
churches was entirely different from that which then 
obtained in almost every part of the Christian world. It 
was expected of all who joined them, to make a volun- 
tary application, and furnish evidence of " fitness for 
membership." 

Thus, in process of time, or about 1650 or 1655, arose 
a difficulty of a very serious nature. " Throughout 
Christendom in that age, neither Jews, Turks, pagans, 
infidels, nor excommunicated persons could enjoy the full 
privileges of citizenship. These privileges belonged only 
to persons who were in communion with the churches 



* Keligion in America, Book VII. Chap. III. This chapter was furnished 
for the work, by Rev. Joseph Tracy. 



24 

established by law. The same rule was adopted in New 
England. None but members of churches could hold 
offices or vote at elections. Here, however, it operated 
as it did nowhere else. As the churches contained only 
those who were, in the judgment of charity, regenerate 
persons, a large portion of the people, among whom were 
many persons of intelligence, of good moral character, 
and orthodox in their creed, were excluded from valuable 
civil privileges." 

It is probable, that the greatest dissatisfaction was ex- 
pressed by those, who had newly arrived in the country, 
and who were quite different from the original colonists. 
But there were some of the children of the fathers, who 
gave no evidence of conversion, and were therefore not 
entitled to vote, or to hold civil offices. To meet the 
difficulty and the growing uneasiness, a part of the 
clergy, in a Synod at Cambridge, 1662, devised what has 
ever since been known, as the "half-way covenant ; " — 
which, however effectual in quieting the discontent of 
such as felt aggrieved, was a very serious mistake, and 
productive of great evil. 

Persons who had been baptized in infancy, were to be 
recognized as members of the church to which their 
parents belonged ; excepting that they were not to be 
allowed to partake of the Lord's Supper, until they 
should furnish the accredited evidence of personal regen- 
eration. They were to profess their assent to the confes- 
sion of faith, at some suitable time, after arriving at 
maturity of understanding. And if they were not 
scandalous in life, having owned the covenant of the 
church, they were entitled to bring their children to the 
ordinance of baptism. 

This new system was strenuously resisted by a part of 
the ministers and of the laity. It never became univer- 
sal ; for the power of the synod, which recommended it, 
was only advisory. But a great change was effected ; 



and, in general, the collision between citizenship and 
church-membership was really at an end. 

Not a few in New England were now ready to write 
"Ichabod" upon all the pillars of the churches. It has 
been thought, that such a change would have been 
impossible, during the lives of the most able and influen- 
tial of the first generation of ministers. These were 
now nearly all gone, and the residue were just going. 

It had become a common remark, it has been said, that 
the old and tried ministers, and other venerable men, were 
fast ceasing from the land ; and a frequent lamentation 
anticipated a most disastrous withering of the hopes, 
which had been watered with their tears, at the feet of 
their sympathizing Redeemer and Lord. But the " vine 
out of Egypt " which had been " planted " among ''the 
heathen," was not thus soon to be forsaken by Him, that 
'' dwelleth between the cherubim." Already it had been 
'* caused to take deep root." " The hills w^ere covered 
with the shadow of it," and "the boughs thereof were like 
the goodly cedars." The " hedges " were not " broken 
down," that " the boar out of the wood " should " waste 
it," and " the wild beast of the field devour it." 

The predominant influence in all matters, both of State 
and Church, was decidedly that of the former generation. 
Troubles multiplied with the Indians, and much more 
blood was poured out, in wars off"ensive and defensive. 
Yet some thousands in the diflerent tribes were brought 
under the power of the Gospel, and considerable villages 
were formed from among them, in which churches were 
built and schools supported. These were at times sub- 
jected to terrible slaughter and devastation, by the Pagan 
Indians ; and sufi'ered not a little also, in some instances, 
at the hands of the whites, who charged the Christian 
Indians, as being spies or accomplices of those who had 
taken up the tomahawk, for the extermination of the 
English. 

4 



A league for this end was formed, under the direction 
of the famous king PhiHp ; and in the struggles which 
preceded and accompanied it, before his death, " e very- 
eleventh family was houseless, and every eleventh soldier 
had sunk to his grave." 

It was just at this period, that the French were moving 
in Canada, to extend the power of France over all the 
immense region of the northwest ; and to secure the 
dominion from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, through the 
great lakes and rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. But of 
their adventurous explorations, from Montreal to Michigan, 
and from Michigan to the Mississippi, the New England 
fathers, it is believed, knew little or nothing.* 

So great was the impoverishment of the people, and 
their distress from Philip's war and divers calamities, that 
their condition awakened the compassionate sympathy 
of their relatives and others across the water. It is 
peculiarly interesting to us at this time to know, that a 
large donation was sent hither from Ireland^ in January, 
1677. Nathaniel Mather, pastor of a church in Dublin, 
and brother of Increase Mather, then pastor of the North 
Church in Boston, is supposed to have been the principal 
agent in procuring this donation. The amount distrib- 
uted in Massachusetts was not less than £363 ; beside 
what was sent to the other Colonies; — which, with the 
necessary expenses, would make the whole collection, 
nearly if not quite one thousand pounds. Truly a gene- 
rous donation in those days, and in proportion to numbers 
and means, fully equal to what has been considered a 
magnificent charity, — the relief sent to Ireland in the 
recent terrible famine ! 

Before 1680, there is no doubt, that there was a marked 
deterioration in the manners and morals of the population, 



* They had probably learned, however, some years before this time, that 
New England is not an ** island." See Appendix, E. 



27 

as compared with the communities of 1640. This may- 
have been owing in a degree to the reaction of the strict 
enforcements of the previous generation ; but far more, 
probably, to the irreligious example of immigrants from 
Europe, and more than all to the fashionable gaiety and 
licentiousness, which had such fearful ascendency in 
England, after the restoration of Charles II. ; and which 
the '' lovers of pleasure more than the lovers of God " in 
the Colonies, particularly in the larger towns, were not 
reluctant to imitate. Thus we find the clergy and pious 
laymen deploring the neglect of baptismal obligations ; 
profanation of God's name ; desecration of the Sabbath ; 
want of piety in heads of families ; intemperance and 
lewdness, — temptations to which they could not but see 
with disgust and abhorrence, in certain indelicate and 
wanton modes of female dress, which, I may observe, 
would not be tolerated a day, in the present generation. 
The godly men also mourned over the dishonesty in 
traffic and unfaithfulness to promises, and the ambitious 
worldliness of some individuals, who had removed to a 
distance from churches, for the sake of more valuable 
farms or merchandize ; forgetting, it was said, that "when 
Lot left Canaan and the church for better accommodations 
in Sodom, God fired him out of alV^ 

In May, 1679, a Synod of the churches in the Massa- 
chusetts Colony was convened by order of Court, to 
consider and answer these questions : — 1st. What are the 
reasons that have provoked the Lord to bring his judg- 
ments upon New England ? 2d. What is to be done that 
so these evils may be removed ? 

The consideration of the first question drew forth such 
intimations of alarming degeneracy, as those just de- 
scribed ; while the second question was met, as might 
have been expected, without any apparent fear of man, 
whether high or low. The synod enjoin upon all, " who 
were above others " to "becoine every way exemplary ; " 



28 

summoned the people to declare " their adherence to the 
faith and discipline of their fathers;" insisted upon the 
importance of guarding against receiving unworthy per- 
sons to church communion ; urged the necessity of '' a 
full supply of church officers, pastors, teachers and ruling 
elders," and a competent support of the same ; recom- 
mended an explicit renewal of covenant in the churches, 
which implied a season of fasting and humiliation ; and 
suggested other reformatory measures, in the use of 
which the people might have reason to expect a removal 
of their calamities. 

Very good effects followed the meeting of that synod. 
The churches generally renewed their covenant. And as 
it would seem, in order that as far as possible the mem- 
bers might be brought to the same faith and practice, as 
'' the fathers " professed and sanctioned, the original 
Confession and Covenant of the First Church in Salem, 
as formed August 6, 1629, were published for general 
circulation and adoption. 

Much abatement must be made from the earnest lan- 
guage, which was employed by some of the good men of 
that period, in portraying the character of the times. 
Many circumstances conspired to spread a gloom over every 
aspect of affairs, both civil and religious. The pious old 
ministers especially, who remembered the best things of 
the earlier days, and forgot the worst, would not unnatu- 
rally make assertions or accusations, which (like some 
confessions in prayer) the historian and the reader must 
not interpret too literally. 

The truth was, probably, that with an indisputable fall- 
ing away in some marked respects, there was yet a large 
majority of families, in which the memory and example 
of " the fathers" were cherished with a sincere and sacred 
veneration. And great as was the quantity of tares which 
the arch-enemy of all righteousness had sowed among the 
wheat, by himself or his servants, the wheat was still able 



29 

to grow for a harvest of "thirty" and ''sixty," if not ''an 
hundred fold." 

Whenever, in our own day, " they that fear the Lord, 
speak often one to another" in the retired private meet- 
ings of prayer and conference, — it is an infallible proof, 
that the Holy Spirit has not been taken away from the 
surrounding community, and an auspicious token of a 
blessing to come. From the beginning of the colonial 
settlements, it had been common to sustain such meetings. 
At some seasons, these were multiplied or more frequently 
attended. Not far from 1680, or in the very time when 
the "degeneracy" from the practices of "the fathers" 
was so much lamented, — we find the statement of a 
writer, that " the country still is full of those little meet- 
ings." There are those, to whom this single item of 
history, is like opening a window upon a verdant land- 
scape, where the rains have fallen, and the sun is shining, 
and the joy of harvest will erelong awaken the song of 
the reaper. Upon the whole, it may unhesitatingly be 
affirmed, that, in no part of the Christian world, was there 
so great encouragement for godly parents to hope for 
spiritual blessings upon their " children's children." 

In the " Magnalia," we have an "ecclesiastical map of 
the country " for 1696. It affords conclusive witness of 
great religious advancement. And with good reason did 
an aged saint of that period remark upon his death-bed, — 
" Well, I am going to heaven, and I will there tell the 
faithful, who are long since gone from New England 
thither, that though they, who gathered our churches are 
all dead and gone, — the churches are still alive, with as 
numerous flocks of Christians, as were ever among them." 

At this time also, notwithstanding all the obstacles and 
difficulties, so great had been the success of laborers 
among the Indians of different tribes, or different portions 
of the same tribe, — that, in 1696, there were not less than 



thirty Indian churches in Massachusetts alone ; and in 
1698, there were three thousand reputed converts. 

But it is painful to be obliged to say, — that there are 
those, who know little else of the religious history of New 
England, in the 17th century, — that is, during the eighty 
years after the Plymouth settlement, — excepting that 
Roger Williams was banished to Rhode Island ; that 
some, who were called Baptists and (Quakers, — very 
different people from those now so called, — were made 
to suffer severe penalties of law ; and that, in Salem, 
innocent people were put to death, under accusation of 
witchcraft. 

I would not assume the responsibility of justifying all 
that was done by '^ the fathers," in repelling the encroach- 
ments of conflicting religious opinions, and in suppressing 
the movements of disorganizers and fanatics ; any more 
than I should be ready to vindicate the propriety of such 
executions as those in Salem, in 1692. But I am prepared 
to say, that the man who cannot find so much of an 
apology for the transactions in question, that he can most 
freely forgive the mistakes of the few, who were most 
concerned in them, and most heartily join in a tribute of 
grateful respect and reverence for those, who are properly 
styled ''the Fathers of New England," — can hardly be a 
man, who is entitled to a very high consideration, for his 
knowledge of the facts, his discrimination of truth, or his 
candor of judgment. Make the very most that can be 
made, of alleged intolerance, persecution, and bigotry, it 
can still be demonstrated, that our New England progeni- 
tors were entirely and most honorably in advance of all 
the rest of Christendom, in their conception of the rights 
of conscience, and their exemplification of Christian liber- 
ty. If they acted inconsistently with their principles, it 
was from the very necessity of their position. " It was 
not," as has been justly said, " so much a question of 
toleration as of the maintenance or defeat of the very de- 



31 

sign of their emigration ; they were well assured, that, if 
the malcontents could succeed in their designs, they them- 
selves would not much longer be allowed their freedom 
in the worship of God."* It was not for opinions^ but 
for corrupt, shameless, disorganizing, and demoralizing 
words and deeds, — that those were caused to suffer, who 
never deserved the least credit or sympathy, as if Chris- 
tian martyrs. He that courts martyrdom, is no martyr. 
Let things be done now in Salem, on the Sabbath, or on 
other days, like those for which some are falsely said to 
have been persecuted ; — and not an hour would pass, 
before the offenders would be in custody. 

And it really would seem a little too much for ordinary 
forbearance, that as honest and pure men as ever breathed, 
should be opposed and reproached in their own generation, 
as going a whole age or more, too fast and too far, and 
then, in generations afterwards, be calumniated and stig- 
matized, for not going, ages upon ages, farther than they 
did ; — calumniated and stigmatized by men too, who, if 
there never had been in the world such characters, as they 
thus outrageously abuse, would themselves have now 
been in benighted barbarism or polluted heathenism ! 
Let who will, point the finger of derision at the pious 
founders of these associated States of the American Re- 
public, — the history of man will be searched in vain for a 
people, that adopted wiser measures, or secured for their 
posterity more exalted privileges and means of knowledge 
and virtue, freedom and happiness ! Toleration of reli- 
gious opinions is one of the last lessons of human ad- 
vancement. And it is much easier to denounce others, 
for illiberality and intolerance, than to be examples of true 
Christian charity. Those who complain the most of their 
fellow-men, for uncharitableness, are not seldom the 
greatest offenders, by being so " fierce for moderation." 

* See Appendix, F. 



3t 

Passing out of the 17th into the 18th century, we soon 
notice another ecclesiastical innovation, which was the 
natural sequence of the half-way covenant of 1662. In 
1707, the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, a 
highly influential divine, published a sermon, in which he 
maintained, that " unregenerate persons ought to partake 
of the Lord's Supper." He had avowed the belief, three 
years before, that the Lord's Supper should be considered 
a means of regeneration. It has been sometimes said, 
that he himself had had a religious experience, which 
would make such a belief very plausible, if not, in his 
own view, unquestionable. 

One of his arguments, and plainly a very specious one, 
was, that " it is impossible to distinguish the regenerate 
from the unregenerate, so as to admit the former and ex- 
clude the latter." So far as his opinions received counte- 
nance, the practical effect was, to remove entirely that 
barrier to indiscriminate communion, which the old half- 
way covenant had not presumed to touch. And as it has 
been shrewdly remarked, " the church was now obliged 
to convict the applicant of a scandalous life, or of heresy, 
or admit him to full communion ; and one reason for it 
was the supposed impossibility of judging whether he was 
regenerated or not ! " 

Mr. Stoddard was personally a decided Calvinist ; but 
his system inevitably favored Arminianism, by " teaching 
that the impenitent have something to do before repent- 
ance^ as a means of obtaining saving grace." The unre- 
generate communicant would of course consider himself 
as in the way appointed for his salvation. And assuming 
that it was impossible to distinguish the really converted 
from the unconverted, by any definite experience which 
could be described, there would naturally be no very great 
disquietude of conscience. 

Mr. Stoddard's new doctrine was ably resisted. Still 
the influence was disastrous ; as appeared from the gradual 



33 

adoption of it by churches, which had recognized the 
system of the half-way covenant. It paralyzed effort for 
immediate conversion. No awakenings were known in 
places, which had previously been highly favored ; and 
many partook of the sacramental elements, who '^ had a 
name to live, but were dead." And that the disaster was 
not more extensive and deplorable, is only to be explained 
by the steadfast adherence of so large a portion of the 
ministers and church members to " the old paths," and 
"the good way" in which " the fathers found rest for 
their souls." There were those in large numbers, who 
protested against the assertion and assumption, that re- 
generate persons cannot be distinguished from the unre- 
generate, with any such certainty or probability, as would 
make a profession of Christian experience a suitable and 
just requirement for admission to the full privileges of 
church-membership. 

As God, in the wonderful working of his providence 
would have it, an instrument of most formidable opposi- 
tion to the doctrine and system of Stoddard, was raised 
up in his own grand-son, Jonathan Edwards ; who, as the 
greatest theologian and metaphysician of this continent, 
commenced his career in the very place, where his much 
respected grand-parent had proclaimed his unfortunate 
errors. As early as 1735, a course of sermons on justifi- 
cation by faith, with others on kindred topics, such as the 
necessity of the Spirit's influences, were blessed of God 
with a marvellous accompanying of convictions and con- 
versions. A similar awakening or revival was experienced 
in other towns of Massachusetts and Connecticut. " The 
work in Northampton was confined to no class or age." 
" Ten persons above ninety, more than fifty above forty 
years of age; nearly thirty between ten and fourteen, and 
one, of only four, became, in the view of Mr. Edwards, 
subjects of renewing grace. More than three hundred 
were added to the church." 
5 



34 

A tremendous shock was now given to the doctrine, 
that the exercises of regenerate persons were not distin- 
guishable from those of unregenerate. Several hundreds of 
new converts, in different towns, had such distinctive re- 
ligious exercises, that they had not the least hesitation in 
speaking of them, as matters of fact in their consciousness, 
as much as any facts whatsoever. They could give a ra- 
tional and most affecting account of their conviction of 
sin, their struggle before submission to God, their accept- 
ance of Christ as the Saviour of the lost, and their sub- 
sequent trust or hope, peace or joy, as believers in Jesus. 
Among these were many persons of such acknowledged 
powers of intellect, and of such indisputable eminence, 
that no man could class them among the ignorant and the 
obscure. 

Ministers were now called to very solemn searchings of 
heart, in regard to their own prospects of acceptance at 
the judgment-seat of Christ. A new encouragement was 
felt, in preaching the law and the gospel, from the expec- 
tation that hearers would be converted, and would be able 
to exhibit credible evidence of having passed from death 
unto life. Church members, also, could not all escape 
the question, so pungently asked by some in our own 
days, ' What reason have I to think myself a Christian ? ' 

Intelligence of the revival in this country arrested the 
attention of a multitude in England and Scotland. Ed- 
wards wrote a narrative, under the title of " Surprising 
Conversions," — which was published in London, " with 
an Introduction by Drs. Watts and Guise." It was soon 
reprinted in Boston, and was extensively read, and exerted 
a powerful influence in both hemispheres. 

In 1740, revivals commenced anew at Northampton, 
Boston, and many other places, very nearly at the same 
time, and spread within a year and a half throughout all 
the English colonies. For some time, there was most evi- 
dently a silent, powerful, and sublime work of the Spirit 



35 

of God. Whitefield came, and preached like Peter on 
the day of Pentecost. Afterwards, the intemperate zeal 
of some preachers, like Davenport, with excesses of vari- 
ous kinds, gave occasion to open and violent contention 
in some towns, and, perhaps, in none more unhappily 
than in Boston. 

Just in the hour of need, the great and good Edwards 
applied his gigantic powers, in a searching and refining 
operation, that all who would, might see the difference 
between the precious and the vile. His work, entitled 
'* Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England, 
and the way in which it ought to be acknowledged and 
promoted," — begins and ends, as if his soul had been 
bathing for years in the " pure river of water of life, 
clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and 
the Lamb." 

Of the most respectable ministers in New England, 
New York, and New Jersey, one hundred and sixty 
united in a public attestation to the genuineness and 
purity of the Revival, in most places ; while they joined 
with Mr. Edwards, in censuring and deploring those 
improprieties and excesses, which had given the enemies 
of God much occasion to blaspheme. Among these, I 
am grateful to know, was my honored father's godly 
grand-parent, — the Rev. Francis Worcester, who was at 
the time the pastor of the Second Church, in your neigh- 
boring town of Sandwich. An intimate acquaintance, 
and sometimes a fellow-traveller with Whitefield, he 
afterwards was a very successful evangelist and home 
missionary, in the more destitute parts of New England. 

Those excellent men could not counteract, as they de- 
sired, the untoward effect of the spirit of controversy, 
which had been inflamed, and which has always proved 
fatal to the progress of a revival. As the Holy Spirit 
operates through the truth, as in Jesus, and the truth 
must be kept distinctly before the mind, that the legiti- 



36 

mate effect may be produced, — it is obvious, that what- 
ever serves to divert the attention of the anxious inquirer 
from the truth itself in its manifestation to the conscience, 
will inevitably be injurious, if not fatal, to the progress of 
the work of grace. It is thus, that discussions on the 
subject of baptism have sometimes put an immediate end 
to a revival. 

Hence, from the controversy which was occasioned, 
the Great Awakening appeared, in 1743, to have come 
to its close. It had wrought, however, a " great salva- 
tion : " for " it was the Jjord's doing." And well might 
it be "marvellous " in the eyes of his people, notwith- 
standing all which they had seen or heard of human 
imperfections and extravagances. " Those who had the 
best means of judging," says a learned and careful writer, 
" estimated the number of true converts, as proved by 
their subsequent lives, at 30,000, in New England alone, 
at a time when the whole population was but 300,000 ; 
besides many thousands more among the Presbyterians of 
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the more 
southern settlements." 

It was, then, as you may see, a result, which you will 
the more vividly apprehend, if you just consider, that it 
would be like adding to the churches in Massachusetts, 
within the next three years, — 80,000 persons, young and 
old, — and of such as would continue to sustain a Christian 
character ; and to the churches throughout the Union, 
not less than eighteen hundred thousand ! ! 

The more I reflect upon the subject, the more am I 
persuaded, that no inconsiderable part of that which 
makes the true glory of New England, and which to 
human eye affords the brightest promise of the world's 
hastening and approaching salvation, would never have 
had an existence, but for those marvellous years of the 
right hand of the Most High. 

I do not wonder that Edwards was led to believe, that 



37 

the millennium was to begin in New England. Most 
cordially did he respond to the proposal by the churches 
of Scotland, in 1746, for a Concert of Prayer for the 
Conversion of the World. And after being dismissed 
from Northampton, it was in the true spirit of missions, 
that he took charge of a church and school of Indians, at 
Stockbridge. 

There were of old mighty men and men of renown. 
But who among " the fathers " was equal to him ? And 
where now is his equal ? His work on "Original Sin," 
his unanswerable Treatise on the " Will," his " His- 
tory of Redemption," his analysis of the " Affections," 
are theological classics, of priceless value, and their 
influence is incalculable. David Brainerd, the most 
illustrious missionary in those times of extraordinary 
reviving, has never had his superior upon the earth, in 
all the essential qualities of an ambassador for God in 
Christ's stead. The wonders of divine grace were no- 
where more wonderful, in all the wide extent of the 
memorable visitation of God's covenant love, than among 
the Indian tribes to whom he ministered in New Jersey. 
To pray for the conversion of the whole world, in the 
concert of prayer recommended the year previous by the 
churches of Scotland, was, in 1747, the farewell injunc- 
tion of that lamented man of God, when he fell asleep in 
Jesus. And who can tell how many, less known by their 
memoirs, or by any other witness, than Henry Martyn 
and Robert Murray McCheyne, have been awakened or 
stimulated to a holier devotedness, by the refulgent and 
inextinguishable lustre of David Brainerd's example in 
imitation of Christ ! 

Much of missionary spirit was enkindled in the Revival 
of 1740. Hence the Indian school of Rev. Eleazer 
Wheelock, at Lebanon, Conn. ; designed to educate 
preachers to the Indians. Hence other efforts which 



38 

cannot be specified. And if the French war and tlie 
Revolutionary war had not so soon followed, and so 
occupied all classes, very much more would undoubtedly 
have been attempted and accomplished. Nothing can be 
plainer, to my own view, than that the churches and 
people of New England grew and prospered, according as 
they enjoyed revivals of religion ; and that in proportion 
as the spirituality of the churches was advanced or 
retarded, the active interest in missionary toils and 
sacrifices was evinced or suspended. 

In 1745, Whitefield preached at Boston before the 
New England army, — I had almost called them "a sacra- 
mental host," — which was just embarking for Louisburg, 
under command of Sir William Pepperell. The expedition 
was undertaken as in "a war of the Lord," against the 
'' man of sin," and the power of mystical " Babylon." 
For wherever France prevailed, there Romanism and 
Jesuitism followed, — the Romanism and Jesuitism of the 
bloody night of Saint Bartholomew's. Unnumbered 
prayers, therefore, went up to the "Lord of Sabaoth." 
The triumph was as when Jerusalem had deliverance 
from Rabshakeh, and Sennacherib : — or as when the 
Maccabees returned to the holy city, after the overthrow 
of the legions of the ferocious Antiochus of Syria, who 
had sworn to exterminate the worshippers of Jehovah 
from every foot of soil in the land of promise. 

From the capture of Louisburg to the fall of Quebec, 
— thence to the Peace of 1783, — and thence to 1795, 
when the volcano of the first French Revolution sent its 
lurid glare and desolating lava over the civilized world, — 
the Christian people of New England and of all the 
Colonies, for more than half of the whole period, had no 
rest from the alarms of war. Their patriotism was one 
with their piety. Tens of thousands went forth to battle, 
or suffered privations and hardships, with as pure a prin- 



39 

ciple of duty, and as firm a reliance upon the mighty 
God of Jacob, as ever emboldened and sustained those 
Hebrew worthies, " who through faith subdued king- 
doms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped 
the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, 
escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were 
made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the 
armies of the aliens ! " 

There were earthly and ungodly elements that min- 
gled in the strife. But if it had not been for the religious 
element ; if it had not been for the baptism, into which 
the " children's children " had been baptized, — never, 
never, could the materials have been furnished for such 
volumes of history, — never have been known such unex- 
ampled occasion for the gratitude of posterity and the 
world, to them and to their fathers, and to their own and 
their fathers' God. 

It would not be difficult to draw a portraiture, with 
some dark lines and shadows. Influences of evil, both in 
opinion and practice, were powerfully at work, in secret 
and in open day. Perhaps none were more decisive upon 
a part of the clergy, than the imported publications, of 
Whitby, Taylor and Emlyn. The Socinian "Inquiries" 
of the latter were reprinted in Boston, without any re- 
sponsible editor ; — but not without a strong surmise of the 
real patron, in an eloquent minister of the city. But with 
all that was sadly incompatible with the '' free course " of 
the gospel ; with all that was positively demoralizing ; — 
the foundations of the " fathers " remained, as unmoved 
as the everlasting hills. 

Although in the metropolis and some of the interior 
towns, there was more of Arminius than of Calvin, both 
in the study and in the pulpit, if not also as much of 
Arius as of Arminius, or as much of Socinus and Taylor 
as of Edwards and Athanasius ; yet a vast majority of the 
New England churches would not endure any other than 



40 

" sound doctrine " as they understood it, and would not 
support any other than liberally educated and strictly 
evangelical pastors. The theological system of the elder 
Edwards had most able advocates. His own son, a 
greater reasoner with somewhat less of the native power 
of reason than the father, vindicated New England divini- 
ty with amazing force of moral demonstration. There 
were others, like Bellamy, Smalley, Backus, West, Hop- 
kins, Emmons, who were as the cedars of Lebanon to the 
trees of the field. 

During the period from 1745 to 1795, the state of re- 
ligion, according to the standard of the fathers, was, per- 
haps, nowhere more unpromising, than in the easterly 
part of Massachusetts, and within the limits of a great 
portion of the oldest churches. It may be accounted for, 
by the more immediate and frequent intercourse with 
foreigners, who had but little favor for experimental god- 
liness ; by the encouragement which a few distinguished 
names afforded to the open opposers of the ''New Lights," 
as some chose to designate the friends of the "Great 
Awakening ; " and by an ambiguous and indefinite mode 
of preaching, which naturally resulted from a real, but 
generally covert, hostility to the Trinitarian and Calvinis- 
tic forms of belief. There was no revival of any note, in 
any of the Congregational churches of the city of Boston, 
from the period of the revival of 1740, almost to our own 
day. With very inconsiderable exceptions, the same re- 
mark may be made of Salem, and other towns on the sea- 
coast. 

It was far otherwise in many places. There was not 
by any means such an apparent suspension of divine in- 
fluence in reviving and enlarging the churches of New 
England, as has sometimes been represented. In the fifty 
years previous to the remarkable season of "refreshing," 
at the close of the last century, there were numerous in- 
sulated revivals, — as has been abundantly attested by re- 



41 

cent investigations ; and also some that were contiguous 
or nearly associated, throughout all that period. There 
were no magazines or religious newspapers to report them ; 
and hence mainly the mistake of some, who have sup- 
posed that there were few or none to report. Besides, 
many of the revivals were in towns which had but little 
communication with the capital. 

When, however, the eyes of the Christian world were 
turned with consternation to the atheistical revolution in 
France, the pious people of this country, and nowhere 
more than in New England, gave themselves to prayer. 
There was also a new searching of the Scriptures, that, 
if possible, it might be known what God was about to re- 
veal in his providence. From a concurrence or combina- 
tion of causes, which cannot now be particularly described, 
the delightful tokens of a brighter day cheered the anxious 
and quivering hearts of the faithful in Christ Jesus. Re- 
vivals began to increase in number and in power. And 
soon it seemed as if the years of the former generation 
were again to pass over the land. 

From 1797 and onward, so many revivals were enjoyed 
in the churches, that an eminent minister in Connecticut, 
as he stood at his door, could count upwards of seventy 
contiguous congregations, which all had participated in 
the outpouring from the gracious presence of the Lord. 
In different parts of New England, there were hundreds 
of ministers, whose hearts were gladdened by this great 
^'refreshing." Some of them had personal recollections 
of the awakening of 1740, with which they gratefully 
compared the present auspicious visitation. Many had 
previously had, in some instances, a rich experience from 
Him, who "giveth the increase." Some, who were in 
the vigor of manhood, had seen the promise of the Spirit, 
like " the small rain upon the tender herb," but never be- 
fore as a " mighty rushing wind." Others knew of revi- 
vals chiefly from records, which were fast growing old, and 
6 



42 

going to decay. But when it is remembered, that there 
were so many churches ready for the wondrous ministra- 
tion of the Spirit, and so many pastors qualified to act as 
co-workers with ''the Lord of the harvest," he who writes 
the history of the Puritan Pilgrims of New England and 
their " children's children," may have ample evidence if 
he will but find it, that, in the fifty or more years previous 
to the close of the eighteenth century, by far the larger 
part of churches and ministers were of one mind and 
spirit with the " fathers," in their doctrinal and practical 
religion. 

In the midst of those revivals near the close of the 
eighteenth century, the missionary spirit, as a legitimate 
consequence, received a new impulse. Evangelical Chris- 
tians, across the Atlantic, had sent missionaries to India, 
Africa, and the islands of the South Pacific. Intelligence 
of their operations was hailed in New England with a 
lively gratitude. It is not strange that none went forth 
from our churches, to other continents or to the distant 
islands that were waiting for God's law. There was a 
loud call for more service at home, than could be rendered. 
The emigration to the wilderness of Maine, to Middle and 
Western New York, to Ohio, and to other parts of the 
Mississippi Valley, urged a powerful claim upon the be- 
nevolent sympathies of those who remained at home, fast 
by the old foundations. With many the thought was too 
painful for endurance, that the new settlements should be 
formed without the institutions of the gospel, and a com- 
petent supply of the means of grace. 

Hence arose such societies, as the Connecticut Mission- 
ary Society, and the Massachusetts Missionary Society. 
This latter society was not at the beginning, nor for 
twenty years afterwards, what it now is, a domestic or 
home missionary society, but was organized upon the 
broad basis of a foreign missionary association. " The 
object of this society ^''^ says the constitution, adopted May^ 



43 

1799, " is to diffuse the knowledge of the gospel among 
the heathens^ as well as other people in the remote parts of 
our country^ where Christ is seldom or never preachedJ^ 

'' Where Christ is seldom or never preached ? " in- 
quired the Rev. Joshua Spaulding, then pastor of the 
Tabernacle Church : " if that is your object, you should 
send missionaries to Boston ! " For two or three years, 
he had been urging his ministerial and lay brethren to 
form a society for missions at their very doors, as within 
the limits of Marblehead, at Boston, and in other places, 
where, as he believed, "Christ was seldom or never 
preached," as hundreds needed to hear ! 

It is remarkable, that his idea of city missions has now 
been adopted, with great interest and effect. But the 
Massachusetts Missionary Society, which owed its origin 
as much or more to him, than to any other single indi- 
vidual, could never have been formed, but with the dis- 
tinct contemplation of a much more extended circum- 
ference for a field of labor. 

The first address of the society breathes the genuine 
spirit of the charge from Mount Olivet. Recognizing 
" the glorious gospel of Christ as the adequate and only 
medium of recovering lost sinners to God and happiness," 
and responding to " the grand commission which Christ 
gave to his primitive disciples," the address " entreats " 
all " Christian brethren, in view of their immense in- 
debtedness to redeeming grace, their solemn covenant 
vows, their accountability and their hopes, to cast the eye 
of attentive observation upon the condition of thousands 
and millions of our guilty race, in other countries and in 
our own, particularly among the heathen tribes, and on 
the frontiers of the United States, forming a vast line of 
new settlements, peculiarly embarrassed with respect to 
their religious interests and local circumstances ; and ask 
whether, when their danger is so great, when their spirit- 
ual wants are so urgent, when there is so much zeal on 



44 

the part of wickedness, infidelity and atheism, counter- 
acting the gospel — there be not reason to put forth every 
exertion for the spread of that precious gospel, which is 
the grand charter of our eternal inheritance." 

The society was thus brought into the closest affinity 
and fellowship with others in Great Britain, like the 
Society for the Propagation of Christian knowledge in 
Scotland, — under the auspices of which the missionaries 
Sergeant and Kirkland were laboring among the Indian 
tribes in Western Massachusetts and New York ; and part 
of which were then as far from Boston, as are now the 
tribes west of the Mississippi. If the means could have 
been procured, establishments precisely similar to those 
now sustained by the American Board of Commissioners 
for Foreign Missions, might have been organized and 
cherished, in the strictest accordance with the purpose of 
the Massachusetts Missionary Society. And the simple 
fact is, that it was not until long after the American Board 
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed, that 
this society and others, which are now purely home socie- 
ties, were understood to be such, in the present accepta- 
tion of the term. By a missionary society, was meant an 
association to spread the gospel through all the world, by 
preaching it in any accessible region or place, where 
" Christ is seldom or never preached." And the Massa- 
chusetts Missionary Society, was a society of Massachu- 
setts missionary men ; not a missionary society for Mas- 
sachusetts ! 

In June, 1803, appeared the first number of the Massa- 
chusetts Missionary Magazine, — in which there is the 
same foreign missionary spirit and general character, as 
you now see in the Missionary Herald. But what a 
change in forty-five years ! If any one would see an 
amazing contrast, and the thrilling demonstration of an 
immense progress in the enterprise of the world's evan- 
gelization, let him read some of the last numbers of the 



45 

Herald of the American Board, and some of the first of 
the Magazine of the Massachusetts Missionary Society. 

And let him compare also the Massachusetts Mission- 
ary Society, in 1800, with its two or three missionaries, 
a part of the year, with the present American Home 
Missionary Society, with its more than one thousand 
missionaries from the Aroostook to Oregon and Cali- 
fornia ! 

So rapidly did the missionary spirit advance, after 
intelligence of foreign and domestic operations was 
brought before the churches, that in 1804, the constitu- 
tion of the society was modified, so that the article 
defining the object was made to read ; — " The object of 
the society is, to ditfuse the gospel among the people of 
the newly settled and remote parts of our country, among 
the Indians of the country, and through more distant 
regions of the earthy as circumstances shall invite, and 
the ability of the society shall admit." And if the men 
could have been had, and the money could have been 
obtained, missionaries could have been sent by the Massa- 
chusetts Missionary Society to Bombay, Ceylon, or the 
Sandwich Islands, just as constitutionally as they were 
afterwards sent by the American Board of Commissioners 
for Foreign Missions. 

This great organization came into form and life, in the 
year 1810. It was necessary to unite the friends of mis- 
sions in all the land, and under the sign and seal of an 
American, rather than a State designation, to solicit con- 
tributions from all the churches of the Union, with 
express reference to missions in Asia, and among the far- 
distant Gentiles of other parts of the known world. 
Other Societies followed, one after another, as the eyes of 
God's people were opened and enlightened. 

The first missionaries of the American Board of Com- 
missioners for Foreign Missions, were from the Theologi- 
cal Seminary at Andover, — an institution which owed its 



46 

origin, chiefly, to the alarm which was felt, after the suc- 
cessor of Dr. Tappan was appointed at Harvard. The 
oldest and most venerable college of the land, — which 
was so early and so piously dedicated to "Christ and the 
Church," — had received a Professor of Theology, who 
taught a very diflferent mode of doctrine from that of the 
" fathers." Yet it has been said by those who ought to 
be acknowledged as indisputable authority, that if at that 
time he had avowed himself to be what he undoubtedly 
was, and what afterwards he freely admitted, he could 
not have been chosen to be the incumbent of a chair, 
which, by the express provision of the pious HoUis, was 
never to be filled, but by a man "0/ sound or orthodox 
principles^'' ! What was meant by such principles, 
there is no more reason to doubt, than there is to deny 
that there ever was any such man as Hollis. The pur- 
pose of his donation should be sacredly regarded ; or the 
trust should be relinquished. 

Far be it from me to speak invidiously or any wise 
reproachfully. It is but sober, candid history that I 
would write of the past. But the truth, once denied 
with no ordinary vehemence if not virulence, is now fully 
conceded, viz : — that in all but one of the Congregational 
churches in Boston, and in perhaps fifty others elsewhere, 
there was a concealment of the real sentiments of the 
pastors. It was not until 1815, and after a most exciting 
controversy, that that '•^ concealment^''^ which had been so 
vigilantly and sagaciously maintained, for nearly or quite 
a whole generation, was no longer possible. And it cer- 
tainly is a consideration, of some historical interest, if not 
theological importance, that the same mode of religious 
doctrine which was thus introduced and fostered in New 
England, had a similar introduction and development in 
Old England, in Scotland, in Holland, in Switzerland, 
and in Germany. 

More than thirty years have now passed, since what 



47 

those most interested prefer to call " Liberal Christianity " 
has been openly and eloquently defended in this country. 
Talents, wealth, literature, refinement, with other power- 
ful auxiliaries, have not been wanting. And now what 
is the prospect, that in any of its modes or forms, it will 
ever supplant the faith of the "fathers" among the 
'« children's children " ? And if this will not supplant 
that faith, what form of doctrine will ? 

According to returns and estimates,* a few years since, 
there were in the United States, nearly fifty thousand 
churches, Congregational, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Meth- 
odist, and Baptist. But according to the best authorities, 
the whole number of Unitarian churches or congrega- 
tions,! throughout the country, at the present time, is 
about two hundred and forty ! Three-fifths of these are 
in Massachusetts alone ; and quite a proportion of them 
are very small. Not one half of the number were gath- 
ered and organized, as Unitarian. Ninety of them exist 
within the limits of the old evangelical organizations. 

Of more than seven hundred Congregational churches 
in Massachusetts, at the present time, nearly five hundred 
and fifty are orthodox. And of these, full two hunjired 
and twenty-five have been gathered within the last twen- 
ty-five years ! The number of other Congregational 
churches has, in the same period, remained nearly statio7i- 
ary ! And the proportion of communicants in the ortho- 
dox Congregational churches, is very much greater ; be- 
ing, at a moderate calculation, as ten to one ! 

In general, also, the efiiciency of the evangelical Con- 
gregational churches has been vastly augmented. It is as 
yet susceptible of a ten fold, if not a hundred fold aug- 
mentation. Upon all the great points of doctrinal dis- 
pute, there is a feeling that the work of public controversy 
is finished. We have a far more congenial work to do, — 



* Baird's Religion in America. t Unitarian Almanac, &c. 



48 

ill carrying forward the numerous enterprises of true 
evangelical charity. 

There is no antidote to error, like the truth as in Jesus, 
when it comes upon the conscience, in demonstration of 
the Spirit. Hence there is no available power, like a 
genuine revival, to give the advantage and the victory to 
the friends of the Saviour. Most abundant and most 
striking has been the witness of this, in the progress 
which evangelical religion has made in our Common- 
wealth, within twenty-five years. 

Look at Boston, and see what it is, as compared with 
what it was forty and thirty years since. Look over all 
New England, and see what mode of religious sentiment 
has the sway over the masses. Make the most that you 
can out of all the various sects and names, which are 
antagonistical to the faith, or at variance with the eccle- 
siastical order of the founders of New England. You 
will find a most decided preponderance of the intellectual 
and the moral strength of their descendants, where they 
would wish, above all things, that it should be ; — uphold- 
ing and advancing the institutions of " the glorious 
gospel," and " the glorious liberty of the children of 
God." 

An hour more would scarcely suffice, that I should only 
name our largest associations of Christian philanthropy, — 
which every day are adding new gems or a brighter 
effulgence to the " crown " of the rejoicing of " the 
fathers," at the coming of the Lord. 

And, my brethren, as we now look back upon the past, 
and around upon the present, how can we despair of the 
Religion of the " fathers ? " Can we with such semina- 
ries of learning and theology, — more than forty of the 
latter existing, where we had but one, forty years ago ; 
with such increasing advantages of popular education ; 
with such an immense distribution of the Bible and of 
books illustrative of the Bible ; with so many thousand 



49 

evangelical churches, and so many hundred thousand chil- 
dren, taught the " words " which are " spirit and life," — 
every Sabbath day ? What Religion, what Doctrine is 
it, which more than twenty-five thousand ministers are 
preaching in the thirty States of this Union ? Radically 
and essentially the Religion of faith in the atoning blood 
of an All-sufficient, because Almighty Redeemer ; and 
the Doctrine, that '^ God so loved the loorld, that he gave 
his 07ily-hegotten Son, that whosoever helieveth in him, 
should not perish, hut have everlasting life^ 

I have no time to enlarge. My limits are more than 
occupied already. But from the review now presented of 
our New England history, you will not, I trust, think of me, 
as uttering more than the words of truth and soberness, 
when I proclaim the sentiment, that of all people in the 
world, we are under the highest obligations to support 
munificently, and communicate to the ends of the earth, 
the knowledge and the institutions of the " everlasting 
gospel." 

The period during which our country has so amazingly 
developed our resources of every description, most need- 
ful and important, for the sustenance, protection, and 
exaltation of a more intelligent, more benevolent, more 
powerful, because more Christian people, than has ever 
existed, — has been the period since the great battle of 
Waterloo. Peace has blessed our land, and so far other 
nations also, that a vastly greater proportion of well- 
educated or of aspiring mind, than ever before, since the 
world began, has been employed in devising ways and 
means, by which labor shall have the largest ratio of 
product with the least amount of physical or mental 
exhaustion ; and by which all the powers of nature shall 
be constrained to pay their richest and noblest tribute to 
him, who was "made" but "a little lower than the 
angels"; and thus the world receive the fullest demori- 
7 



60 

stration, that he who fell with " the first man," rises by 
" the second " — " the Lord from heaven," — higher and 
higher in the original dignity and grandeur of his immor- 
tal nature, — recovering and re-assuming one measure after 
another of his lost dominion over the whole inferior 
creation. 

When before were such opportunities, facilities, and 
incitements to mental and moral activity, afforded to so 
large a number, as now constitute the substantial and 
reliable portions of our community ? Since Europe has 
been brought within less than twelve days from our 
greatest cities ; and the magnetic telegraph outstrips the 
sun, by thousands of miles per hour, — what next may we 
not expect to see, among the merely ^^ ijicidental benefits,'^'' 
as they were termed by Robert Hall, — " which Christian- 
ity scatters along her way in her sublime march to 
immortality ? " What a spectacle are we now as a 
nation ? And what is yet to be ? 

When Calvin was dying, he reached his emaciated 
hand towards an open Bible ; — " there is the safety of the 
Church and the State ! " So felt the " fathers " of New 
England, to their inmost soul. In the Bible — Old Testa- 
ment and New — one and inseparable, — they found the 
Rock of Ages. They lived and they died, triumphantly 
" looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing 
of the GREAT God and our Saviour Jesus Christ ; who 
gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all 
iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zeal- 
ous of good works." 

Let us, therefore, as their children's children, cherish 
like precious faith ; and with them give God the glory of 
all that we have, and all that we hope. Let us send the 
gospel to the farthest bounds of the globe. It is the 
greatest gift, which man can impart to his brother man. 



51 

It is God's appointed method for the intellectual, moral, 
civil, and political regeneration of all the various nations 
and tribes of the earth ; as well as for the personal salva- 
tion of each individual, whatever his honor or dishonor, 
his wealth or poverty, his virtue or his corruption, his 
enjoyment or his wretchedness. 

In fulfilling the grand commission of our ascending 
Saviour and Lord, we would begin at our own Jerusalem. 
We would remember those who are like sheep in the wil- 
derness, without a shepherd ; and as we the more remem- 
ber them^ would still the less forget the famishing and the 
perishing upon the dark mountains of far-distant idolatries 
and cruel sorrows. We would publish the adorable name 
of Jesus to every creature. And that the children who 
will take our places may have our exalted and priceless 
privileges unimpaired ; that those thousands, those mil- 
lions who are following "the star of empire" westward 
to the Pacific shores, may never lose sight of the " Bright 
and Morning Star"; that the mighty people that now 
are, and all that may arise from them, or be added to 
them, may be mightier far in the eyes of all the world, 
and in the sight of the Supreme Lawgiver and the Judge 
of all, be " a wise and understanding people " ; — may 
we all most gratefully honor the memory of our fathers, 
and with the same love of Christ and of souls, the same 
faith and hope, may we enter into their labors. And the 
greater the number, the unanimity, the energy, and the 
unfaltering resolution and perseverance of those who thus 
enter into their labors, — the greater is the moral certainty, 
that, for all ages to come, the Scripture will here have a 
most magnificent and sublime witness, — that " chil- 
dren's CHILDREN ARE THE CROWN OF OLD MEN, AND THE. 



GLORY OF CHILDREN ARE THEIR FATHERS 



" f 



APPENDIX. 



A. [p. 9.] 

The Pilgrims, before they landed, made a civil compact, as follows : 

" In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are vnder- written, the 
loyall Subiects of our dread soveraigne Lord King Iames, by the grace 
of God of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the 
Faith, &c. 

"Having ynder- taken for the glory of God, and advancement of the 
Christian Faith, and honour of our King and Countrey, a Voyage to plant 
the first Colony in the Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents 
solemnly & mutually in the presence of God and one of another, covenant, 
and combine our selues together into a civill body politike, for our better 
ordering and preservation, and ftirtherance of the ends aforesaid ; and by 
vertue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such iust and equall Lawes, 
Ordinances, acts, constitutions, offices from time to time, as shall be 
thought most meet and convenient for the generall good of the Colony ; 
vnto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witnesse 
whereof we haue here-vnder subscribed our names. Cape Cod, 11th of 
November, in the yeare of the raigne of our sovraigne Lord King Iames, of 
England, France, and Ireland, I 8. and of Scotland 54. Aimo Domino 1620." 

•' The elder President Adams," says Dr. Pierce in his recent Election 
Sermon, " was in the habit of referring to this compact, as the germ of our 
republican institutions." 

It does not appear, that the Pilgrims had any very definite idea of the 
manner in which they should attempt to manage civil aff'airs, until they 
were on the very point of disembarking. 

" This day before we came to harbour, obseruing some not well affected 
to vnitie and concord, but gaue some appearance of faction, it was thought 
good there should be an association and agreement, that we should combine 
together in one body, and to submit to such government and governours, 
as we should by common consent agree to make and choose, and set our 
hands to this that followes word for word." 

But in their ecclesiastical action, as church-members upon the basis of 
equality and fi.-aternity, and in their " Town-Meetings," we cannot fail to 
recognize what Mr. Bancroft has called " the seminal principles of republi- 
can freedom and national independence." K, however, they had found 
the river Hudson, for which they had searched, they would have been so 
near the limits of the Virginia Company, that they might not have formed 
the Compact, "which," as Dr. Cheever justly remarks in his recent 
work,—" whatever may have been their original intention or foresight, 
constituted them a self-governing republic, although named 'loyal subjects 
of our dread sovereign lord. King James.' " 

^ Yet it is to be remembered, that the real purpose of the founders of our 
civil and political institutions was religious, in the strictest sense of the 
term. This is indicated by the first words of the above Compact. Else- 
where the witness is most explicit. The reasons for leaving Holland are 
" recited," says Morton's Memorial, " as received from themselves." 

" First, Because themselves were of a different Language from the Dutch, 
where they Lived, and were settled in their way, insomuch that in ten 
years time, whilst their Church sojourned amongst them, they could not 
bring them to reform the neglect of Observation of the Lord's Day as a Sab- 
bath, or any other thing amiss amongst them. 



53 

" Secondly, Because their Countrymen, who came over to joyn with 
them, by reason of the hardness of the Country, soon spent their 'Estates, 
and were then forced either to return back to England, or to live very 
meanly. ^ 

" Thii-dly, That many of their Children, through the extream necessity 
that was upon them, altho' of the best dispositions, and graciously inclined, 
and willing to bear part of their Parents burthens, were oftentimes so oppres- 
sed with their heavy labours, that although their Spirits were free and wil- 
hng, yet their Bodies bowed under the weight of the same, and became de- 
crepid in their early youth, and the vigour of Nature consumed in the very 
bud. And that which was very lamentable, and of all sorrows most heavy 
to be born, was, that many by these occasions, and the great licentiousness 
of Youth in that Country, and the manifold temptations of the place, were 
di-awn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses, 
gettmg the reins on their necks, and departing from their Parents : Some 
became Souldiers, others took upon them far Voyages by Sea, and other- 
some worse courses tending to dissoluteness, and the destruction of their 
Souls, to the great grief of their Parents, and the dishonour of God ; and 
that the place being of great licentiousness and liberty to Children, they 
could not educate them, nor could they give them due con-ection without 
reproof or reproach from their Neighbours. 

'' Fourthly, That their Posterity would in few generations become Dutch 
and so lose their mterest in the English Nation ; they being desirous rather 
to enlarge His Majesties Dominions, and to live under their Natural 
PRINCE. 

" Fifthly and lastly, and which Avas not the least, a great hope and in- 
ward Zeal they had of laying some good Foundation, or at least to make 
some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancement of the Gospel of 
the Kmgdom of Christ in those remote parts of the World, yea, altho' they 
should be but as stepping stones unto others for the perfoi-mance of so 
great a Work." 

In the Preamble of the Articles of Confederation, in 1643, it is said : 
" Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same 
end and aim, namely, to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with peace," kc.— Win- 
throp's Journal. 

B. [p. 11.] 

For illustrations of these statements, see Baird's "Religion in America," 
"Synopsis of Missions," Morse and Parish's History of New England, 
Thomas Robbins's " New England Fathers," &c. &c. But the subject de- 
mands more attention, than it has ever received. 

C. [p. 14.] 

The Records of the First Church, previous to 1660, are supposed to be 
lost. In the Records of the Tabernacle Church, there is a Transcript of a 
Pamphlet entitled, " A Copy of the Church Covenants which have been 
used in the Church of Salem, formerlv, and in their late reviewing of the 
Covenant on the day of the Public Fast, April 15th, 1680. * * * 
Boston, printed at the desu-e and for the use of many in Salem, for them- 
selves and children, by J. F., 1680." It begins as foUows :— "There was 
a Church Covenant agreed upon and consented to by the Church of Salem 
at their first beginning in the year 1629, Aug. 6th." 

" The following Covenant was propounded by the Pastor, was ao-reed 
upon and consented to by the brethren of the Church, in the year 1636. 

"We whose names are here underwritten, members of the present 
Church of Christ in Salem, having found by sad experience how dangerous 
it is to sit loose from the covenant we make with our God, and how apt we 
are to_ wander into by-paths, even unto the loosing (losing ?) of our first 
aims in entering into church fellowship ; do therefore solemnly in the 
presence of the eternal God, both for our own comforts, and those who 



54 

shall or may be joined unto us, renew the Church Covenant we find this 
Church bound unto at their first beginning, viz : * That we covenant with the 
Lord, and one with another, and do bind ourselves in the presence of God, 
to walk together in all his ways, according as he is pleased to reveal him- 
self unto us in his blessed word of truth ; ' and do more explicitly, iti the 
na?ne and fear of God, profess and protest to toalk as folloiveth, through the 
power and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

" 1. We avouch the Lord to be oiu- God, and ourselves to be his people, 
in the truth and simplicity of our spirits. 

" 2. We give ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the word of his 
grace, for the teaching, ruling, and sanctifying of us in matters of worship 
and conversation, resolving to cleave unto him alone for life and glory, 
and to reject all contrary ways, canons, and institutions of men in his 
worship." 

The other articles are the same, as commonly published in what has 
erroneously been said, so many times, to be " doubtless the first Church 
Covenant ever drawn in America." 

In a printed Tract, without date, but undoubtedly issued in the year 
1680, we have the "Confession of Faith" with a form of "Covenant," 
" for substance," as adopted 6th of August, 1629. The expression "/or 
substance" implies, of course, that the original was neither less in quantity, 
nor different in quality. The Tract may be found in the Boston Athense- 
um, B. 76, Sermons. It is entitled, 

" A Direction for a public profession in the Church Assembly, after pri- 
vate examination by the elders. Which direction is taken out of the 
Scripture, and points unto that faith and covenant contained in the Scrip- 
ture. Being the same for substance which was propounded to and agreed 
upon by the Church of Salem, at their begining, the sixth of the sixth 
month, 1629." 

"THE CONFESSION OF FAITH. 

" I do believe with my heart and confess with my mouth. 

" Concerning God. — That there is but one only true God in three persons, 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, each of them God, and all of 
them one and the same Infinite, Eternal God, most Holy, Just, Merciful 
and Blessed forever. 

" Concerning the works of God. — That this God is the Maker, Preserver 
and Governor of all things according to the counsel of his own will, and 
that God made man in his own Image, in Knowledge, Holiness and Right- 
eousness. 

" Concerning the fall of Man. — That Adam by transgressing the command 
of God, fell from God and brought himseK and his posterity into a state of 
sin and death, under the wrath and curse of God, which I do believe to be 
my own condition by nature as well as any other. 

" Concerning Jesus Christ. — That God sent his Son into the world, who 
for our sakes became man, that he might redeem us and save us by his 
obedience unto death, and that he arose from the dead, ascended into 
heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God, from whence he shall come to 
judge the world. 

" Concerning the Holy Ghost. — That God the Holy Ghost hath fully re- 
vealed the doctrine of Christ and the will of God in the Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testament, which are the word of God, the perfect, perpet- 
ual, and only r\ile of our Faith and obedience. 

" Concerning the benefits we have by Christ. — That the same Spirit by 
working faith in God's Elect, applyeth unto them Christ with aU Ms bene- 
fits of justification and sanctification unto salvation, in the use of those or- 
dinances which God hath appointed in his written word, which therefore 
ought to be observed by us unto the coming of Christ. 

" Concerning the Church of Christ. — That all true believers being commit- 
ted unto Christ as the head, make up one Mistical Church, which is the 
body of Christ, the members whereof, having fellowship with the Father, 



55 

Son, and Holy Gkost by faith, and one mth another in love, do receive 
here upon earth forgiveness of sins, with the life of grace, and at the resur- 
rection of the body they shall receive everlasting life. 
"THE COVENANT. 

" I do heartily take and avouch this one God who is made known to us in 
the Scripture, by the name of God the Father, and God the Son even Je- 
sus Christ, and God the Holy Ghost, to be my God, according to the tenour 
of the Covenant of Grace ; wherein he hath promised to be a God to the 
faithful and their seed after them in their generations, and taketh them to 
be his people, and therefore unfeignedly repentmg of all my sins, I do give 
up myself wholly to this God, to believe in, to love, ser\-e, and obey him 
sincerely and faithfully, according to his written word, against all the temp- 
tations of the devil, the world, and my own flesh, and this unto the death. 

" I do also consent to be a member of this particular Church, promising 
to continue steadfastly in fellowship with it, in the public worship of God, 
to submit to the Order, Discipline, and Goverment of Christ in it, and to 
the ministerial teaching, guidance and oversight of the Elders of it, and to 
the brotherly watch of the Fellow-^Iembers ; and all this according to 
God's word and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, enabling me there- 
unto. Amen." 

D. [p. 19.] 

•* After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded 
our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient 
places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, — one of the 
next things we longed for and looked after was to advance Learning, and 
perpetuate it to posterity — dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the 
churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. 

"And as we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work, 
it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard, a godly gentleman 
and a lover of learning, there living amongst us, to give the one-half of 
his estate, it being in all about £1,700, towards the erecting of a College, 
and all his Library. After him another gave £300 ; others after them cast 
in more ; and the public hand of the State added the rest."— New England's 
First Fnuts. — Yoimg's Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 551. Note. 

Free schools had been previously established in Holland. In New Eng- 
land they began in the Church. The first free school, as a civil institution^ 
is believed to have been in Salem. 

E. [p. 26.] 

Robert Cushman, in his " Epistle Dedicatory" of his Sermon preached 
at Plymouth, in 1621, gives some geographical account of New England. 
He speaks of it as ' being Champion ground, but no high mountains, &c. ; 
full of Rivers and Sweet Springs, as England is. But principally, so far as 
we can yet find, it is an island, and near about the quantity of England, 
being cut out from the main Land in America, as England is from the main 
of Europe, by a great arm of the Sea, wliich entereth in forty Degrees, and 
runneth up North West and by West, and goeth out either into the South- 
Sea, or else into the Bay of Canada. The certainty whereof, and secrets of 
which, we have not yet so found as that as eye-witnesses we can make 
narration thereof, but if God give time and means, we shall, ere long, 
discover both the extent of that River, together with the secrets thereof ; 
and so try what Territories, Habitation, or Commodities, may be found, 
either in it, or about it.' 

F. [p. 31.] 

As it regards the difficulties with Roger Williams, and his true charac- 
ter, the reader is referred to several very able articles in the " Christian 
Observatory." The Editor has investigated the whole subject, in the most 
thorough manner. See also Dr. Cheever's " Journal of the Pilgrims," &c. 
Chap. XVin. " Our fathers," says Mr. McClure, " turned Mr. Williams 



56 

out of doors, because he was tearing tlieir house to pieces. For perform- 
ing this necessary act of self-preservation, we leave them to be vindicated 
by John Quincy Adams, that foe of bigotry, and firm friend of civil and 
religious liberty. In a discourse published by him some six years since, 
after a candid statement of the facts, he asks : ' Can we blame the found- 
ers of the Massachusetts Colony for banishing him from within their juris- 
diction ? In the annals of religious persecution, is there to be found a 
martjT more gently dealt with by those against whom he began the war 
of intolerance ? whose authority he persisted, even after professions of pen- 
itence and submission, m defying, till deserted even by the wife of his 
bosom ? and whose utmost severity of punishment upon him was only an 
order for his removal as a nuisance from among them ? ' " * * " Williams's 
colony was obliged to procure the help of Massachusetts in banishing the 
fanatical Gorton and his outlaws ; obtaining an illegal extension, over their 
own territory, of the very laws by which Williams was then excluded from 
Massachusetts. This hard necessity of theirs, may amply excuse the like 
necessity on the part of • the people of the Bay.' " 

If any one will read Morton's account of the dismission of Roger Wil- 
liams from the Church of Plymouth, and of the subsequent proceedings at 
Salem and Boston, it will be seen, that the same view was taken of him in 
both colonies. The Church " consented " to his dismission, " through the 
prudent counsel of Mr. Brewster, (the Ruling Elder there,) fearing that 
his continuance amongst them might cause divisions, and there being many 
able men in the Bay, they ivonlcl better deal with him than themselves could, 
and foreseeing (Avhat he feared concerning Mr. Williams, which afterwards 
came to pass) that he would run the same course of rigid separation and 
Anabaptistry, which Mr. John Smith, the Sebaptist at Amsterdam had 
done," &c. 

Roger Williams was not banished for being a Baptist. He never was a 
Baptist in Massachusetts, and but ^^for three months " in Rhode Island. 

In respect to the •' intolerance" attributed to " the fathers," Dr. Cheev- 
er's remarks concerning the " BroAnies " at Salem, are much to the pur- 
pose. Take, for example, a single paragraph. 

" ' I will be tolerant of every thing else,' said Mr. Coleridge, ' but every 
other man's intolerance.' Now here it was plainly the intolerance of 
others, not their religion, of which Governor Endicott would not be tole- 
rant. And in this thing he and the colonists were evidently guided by 
Infinite Wisdom. For, if the churchmen had been permitted to go on, 
there would have been an end to this sanctuary of freedom in the wilder- 
ness. There would have been no New England in existence, in the history 
of which there should be scope for a sneer at the piety, or the freedom, or 
the superstition of its founders. Their not being suffered to go on, is the 
reason why they, and all other sects, even Bunyan's Giant Grim, with his 
nails pared, are here in quiet now. God, in his gracious divine providence, 
would not suffer any others than the persecuted Puritanic Dissenters to 
get footing here, until both in the Old World and the New, the great 
lesson of religious liberty had been more fully taught and understood. 
He had much light yet for Cromwell and the Independents of England to 
pour upon this question. The sneers at the course of our Pilgrim Fathers 
are sneers against the providence of God and the freedom of man." 

It was " in the Bay," that the innovating spirits were disposed to settle. 
The attractions to emigrants were very few at Plymouth. In ten years the 
Colony had but three hundred souls. And although it has sometimes been 
intimated, that the Church there was much more tolerant than the Churches 
" in the Bay," there really is no valid proof, as yet furnished, that there 
was any difference in principle, or prevailing opinions. And if there be 
any appearance in favor of Plymouth, it is at once explained by a differ- 
ence of the circumstances ; or the operation of such causes as make some 
men more " prudent" than others, and not unwilling to evade personal re- 
sponsibility, instead of acting with decision and firmness. 



♦ J» 



m^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



-1 m:' 



/,. r>^: 




012 608 561 8 



^'m:- 






\%1 



•'*^» 



»t 



'i^: 



^^■l 



